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If you want to have a good podcast title, then avoid these words.

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Thank you for joining me for The Audacity to Podcast. I'm Daniel J. Lewis.

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Your podcast title might be the single most important text for your podcast. The best

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titles will clearly communicate your subject to potential audiences and stand out in relevant

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search engines. Yes, there are plenty of highly popular podcasts with less descriptive titles,

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like Serial. But they became successful despite their titles because they had a lot of good

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marketing. However, even a quick look through the current top charts in Apple podcasts left me

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having to do very little guessing about the subjects of most of those top shows because of

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their mostly descriptive titles and relevant podcast cover art. Most of us podcasters don't

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have vast marketing budgets to compensate for bad titles. But there are some words I

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suggest avoiding in your podcast title. This will help you optimize for search, for uniqueness,

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for branding, for comprehension, and for usage. The following are only guidelines, not laws.

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So you can break these, but if you break them, break them intentionally, not accidentally,

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break them with good reasons. And a good reason is not because it looks cool. Come up with

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better reasons than that. Follow along in the notes for this episode or share this episode

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with any other podcasters who would benefit from it. A tap or swipe away inside of your

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app or go to theaudacitytopodcast.com/avoidwords.

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Number 1. Ambiguous cuteness. It can be cute to replace words like "to" and "for"

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with the numbers 2 and 4. But that cuteness can cause confusion,

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especially if your current or potential audience will need to type the name of your podcast

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into a domain, into their podcast app, into a social app, or anything like that. Or maybe

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you get cute with the spelling like "Wut Nuw with U?"

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Don't do that. Please. Just don't do that.

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If you do cute things with your title, you might have to always clarify it like saying

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That's the number 2. Not "to," not "too," not "two," but the number. Make sure you type

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the number, not spelling it out or anything like that. Or you might have to always spell

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it out if you have some cute title or you do something weird like that. And that just

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complicates your calls to action and makes it more difficult for your audience to take

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action. I'm not suggesting you avoid all forms of cuteness, although maybe you should

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consider it, but avoiding what would be ambiguous to a listener. If you do go with cuteness,

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try to get the other potential understandings of your titles as domains and social media

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IDs for the social media platforms that you actually promote. And those should be only

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the ones where you actually participate. And then point those misunderstandings or typo

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versions to the correct place. I see this often with websites where they register the

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often mistyped versions of the domains, for one thing so that hackers and scammers can't

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get those mistyped versions, but also just to make it easier for people that if they

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accidentally misspell the domain, they still end up being redirected to the right place.

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And if you're worried about your cute title being used uncutely by someone else, then

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the best protection will come from claiming it as a trademark and registering that trademark

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where you can. So that's number one, ambiguous cuteness. Number two, easily misunderstood

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made up words or mashups. Similar to being cute, it seems the dot-com era made it popular

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to make up new words or mash parts of words together. The latter of this actually being

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called a portmanteau. For example, I could mash up entrepreneur and father to get entre-father

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or fatherpreneur. Or I could mash up investment with analytics and get investalytics. However,

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the key is to avoid easily misunderstood things. I actually think these mashups I just made

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up might be easy enough to understand. And made up words or mashups are much easier to

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trademark because of their distinctness. In fact, I have a pending trademark that leverages

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this same idea. Language changes, yes. And some portmanteaus are so popular that they've

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been defined in the dictionary, spellchecks don't flag them, and most people wouldn't

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even have to wonder what you're talking about. For example, smog. We all know what

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smog is, right? That's a combination of the words "smoke" and "fog" and that

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started way back in the 1800s. I think everyone knows what a brunch is, and a word like infotainment

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is inherently clear that it's combining information or info and entertainment. And

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of course, our very own word "podcast" is a portmanteau of the words "iPod" and

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"broadcast". So it's not inherently bad to make up words or portmanteaus, it's

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only bad if it's easily misunderstood. For example, "BuyFriar."

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That could be a podcast about purchasing air fryers. That could also be

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easily misunderstood as "ByFriar," a podcast critiquing the writings of a past

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friar like Friar Tuck or something like that. Although he wasn't a past Friar, he was

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a fictional Friar. But even the word "fryer" might be commonly misspelled as "frier" instead

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of "fryer." Just like how "whoa," which is the correct spelling, is so commonly

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misspelled as "woah." And yet, it delights my heart to see my spell checker still flag

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"woah" as a misspelling! Please don't let the world take this one. Let's spell it

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correctly, please, it's W-H-O-A. Maybe that's a word you should avoid in your title altogether

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because people misspell it so commonly. When you have a title for your podcast, try speaking it to

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someone unfamiliar with your podcast to see if they properly understand what you're saying and

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can even correctly guess what your show is about. And if there is still potential confusion, either

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consider a different title or follow the same tip from number one to get the alternative

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versions for domains and social media IDs if you want to catch those misspellings.

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Number three, starting with "the". I've seen many strong brands weakened with a simple,

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unnecessary "the". For example, consider the hilarious conservative satire site with

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B in the title. Is it the Babylon Bee or Babylon Bee? Their own website isn't even consistent

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with it. The logo and social IDs have "the" at the beginning, but the website domain and

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copyright line exclude "the". So which is it, the Babylon Bee or Babylon Bee? I'm

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a bit of a stickler for this. If an official title has a "the" then I will speak that

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title no matter what. That's my own style choice and you might have your own preference.

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For example, how would you refer to the Babylon Bee's website? Would you do it just the

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way that I said it, saying "The Babylon Bee's website" capitalizing the T in

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"the" no matter where it appears in your sentence? Or would you say "The The Babylon

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Bee's website" where you have "the" listed twice, which would be technically accurate

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if you're including the "the" in their title? Or would you try verbal gymnastics

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to avoid that wording problem altogether? Which might actually be the better solution.

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Using a "the" seems to de-emphasize the rest of the title. In the same example with

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the Babylon Bee, it makes me think there are other kinds of bees besides spelling bees,

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as if it's a well-known genre of content or publishing style, and this is merely the

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The Babylon one, just like the Tire Museum. There are lots of other museums out there.

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This is the Tire one. It's the museum about tires. It's the Tire Museum. There are,

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however, some times when "the" is still good for clarity. I consider my own show title

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to be an example of this, "The Audacity to Podcast". And side note, the reason why

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I pronounce it "the" instead of "the" in this case is because the next word starts

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with a vowel sound. So it's not "the" Audacity to Podcast, it's "the" Audacity

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to Podcast. That's a mostly English thing I think that's a general good guideline.

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And when I came up with that title, I debated the inclusion of the word "the" way back

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in 2010. Because I always wanted to emphasize audacity to mean guts, courage, boldness,

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and the like, I could not hear that as much if I titled it Audacity to Podcast. It really

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needs that "the" in there. Plus, you might have noticed that I've been emphasizing it

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stronger in how I say it here in the podcast as well. "The audacity to podcast." See,

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I feel like that "the" in there just leads into it instead of "audacity to podcast."

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"The audacity." I also think of that Grinch movie where he's like, "The audacity! The

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unmitigated goal. The "the" in there helps emphasize it more and it makes sense. It's not

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an unnecessary "the." I think it's a necessary one. And starting with "the" might still be a

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good practice if your title must include the word "podcast" or "show," like "The Katie Smith Show."

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And that leads into my next suggestion, which I'll get to in just a moment. If you do have to start

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with a "the" in your title, please make sure you also get domains and branding without

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the starting "the", which the Babylon Bee has done.

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If you type in thebabylonbee.com, it takes you to babylonbee.com.

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Do the same thing with your podcast.

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I've done that for mine.

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Try to do that for your own if you can.

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Number four, podcast or show.

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Now let me address the potential elephant in the room since I brought up the title of

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my own show, The Audacity to Podcast. I'm using the word podcast as a verb in my show title. You

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could replace that word with any other verb and the title would still make sense. For example,

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"The Audacity to Bake", "The Audacity to Invest", "The Audacity to Read", or "The Audacity to Think".

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You could also replace it with a verb phrase like "The Audacity to Cook Dinner", "The Audacity to

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drive cars, but replace "podcast" in my title with a noun like "The Audacity to

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Movie" or "The Audacity to Carrot" and you'll see that the title doesn't make

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sense anymore or it even sounds childish. Thus, if I used "The Audacity to Podcast"

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as a bigger brand name, my audio podcast could be accurately referred to as "The The Audacity

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to podcast, "podcast" and I've actually heard it called that before. Yeah, that's

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weird. Don't do that to yourself. But most of the time I see podcasters want to use the

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words "podcast" or "show" in their titles, their usage would be as a noun and

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probably unnecessary. On top of that, they're usually combining it with an unnecessary "the"

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at the beginning too. Consider this for example, and I'm sure there's a podcast out there

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by this name. I'm not mocking them or anything. I just came up with this title on the fly.

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Which title sounds better? As a brand, Impactful Living or The Impactful Living Show? I think

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the shorter, cleaner version sounds better. You could also imagine it in podcast openings

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like Welcome to Impactful Living vs. Welcome to The Impactful Living Show. See, putting

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the title in there without the "the" and "show" I think not only sounds like stronger

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branding where, yeah, of all of the shows out there, this is the impactful living one

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of all of those shows out there.

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You're instead just saying "Impactful Living".

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And it also just sounds really cool with the title.

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Welcome to Impactful Living.

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Like I'm not only welcoming you to the title of the thing you're now listening to, but

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I'm also welcoming you to an idea, an existence.

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I did something very similar with a short-run podcast that I did every day for a month a

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few years ago.

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I called it Inside the Podcasting Business.

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So I didn't say, "Welcome to the Inside the Podcasting Business show."

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I said, "Welcome Inside the Podcasting Business" as a little play on words because I was both

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welcoming you inside my podcast business as well as welcoming you to my podcast, which

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was called Inside the Podcasting Business.

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I suggest also considering your search engine optimization (SEO).

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Searching in podcast apps is still not the best experience at this time.

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While some apps might smartly search for "and" when you type am ampersand and vice versa and

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even handle different forms of words like plural and singular and even some misspelling

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sometimes, the search engines can also be dumb sometimes. And things like starting with

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a "the" can sometimes break that too. However, I think it might be untrue when some

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people say that adding the word "podcast" makes your podcast suddenly less findable

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because it's now competing with all the other podcasts that have the word podcast in their

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titles too. At least that's my observation with some initial testing and even my own

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show in Apple Podcasts. It really depends on how the search is treating the word. Like

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with The Audacity to Podcast, when I type it into Apple Podcasts as the Audacity to

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Podcast, the full title, my podcast shows up as number one both on the initial search

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results screen and if I tap on show all. Now if I type in The Audacity 2, my podcast does

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still show up first in the initial search results screen. But if I then tap on show all,

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then my podcast is not first anymore. So it actually shows up first if I do put in the word

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podcast. But then what if I had a title where the word podcast was kind of unnecessary?

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Are you starting to see where the SEO part comes into play with this? Where your audience might

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not remember to put in the word podcast. Now like in my title, it makes sense. You wouldn't type in

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The Audacity 2 because I don't think anyone thinks my show is called The Audacity 2. They think of it

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as The Audacity to Podcast. But if you have something like The Katie Smith Show or The Katie

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Smith Podcast, they might just type in Katie Smith instead of Katie Smith Show or Katie Smith Podcast.

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With an even deeper technical aside, this is a difference between what are called AND

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and OR Boolean operators. Using The Audacity to Podcast as an example, the words "the" and "to"

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might be considered irrelevant or stop words by some search engines and thus not even used in

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the search. So that might leave "Audacity" and "Podcast" as the only search terms.

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Looking at the AND and OR Boolean operators, the AND operator would show results that have

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both audacity and podcast in the title and only those results that have both of them. But the OR

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operator would show results that have either audacity or podcast or both. So you'd end up with

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more results. You don't have to type these operators in most search engines anymore, but

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some search engines automatically use one or the other in their backend and how they handle the

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search query. A simple way to find out would be to see if adding more words gives you more results

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and that would be the OR operator where every time you add an additional word it's bringing in even

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more results because of that additional word match. Or is it giving you fewer results when

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you add more words and that's the AND operator which is essentially a filter. You're now looking

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for all the podcasts that have this word and this word and this word and therefore it would be a

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smaller search result. For example, the podcast index search currently shows 11 results for

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The Audacity 2 but only three results for The Audacity 2 podcast and of those three,

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two of them are mine. So it's not a universal rule that adding the word "podcast" makes your show

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compete in the search results for all other podcasts with "podcast" in the title. That

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might be the case in some places, might not be the case in others. You just can't assume it.

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Nonetheless, it's usually an unnecessary word for your title so it would be better to try to avoid

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it for your title altogether. Where it's good to break this rule is when the podcast is using a

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recognized name from a bigger brand. For example, if Microsoft started a podcast, it would be better

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to be called "The Microsoft Podcast" than simply "Microsoft" because the brand is

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so much larger than the podcast. Or if Apple started a podcast about the iPhone, they could

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call it "The iPhone Podcast". But even in this case, I would suggest a completely

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different name. Like for the Microsoft example, I would suggest instead of "The Microsoft

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Podcast" something like "Microsoft's Business Computing". Or even move the brand

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name to the artist field, take it out of the title so the title would simply be

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"Business Computing" and then you'd see in the artist tag that it says "Microsoft" and

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the artist tag is already searchable in all podcast apps I've tested. So if you

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were searching for "Microsoft", a podcast no matter what it's called, if it has

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"Microsoft" as the artist for that podcast, it would show up in the search results.

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And, I still think it's fine to use podcast or show to help you get a domain that fits

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your podcast title.

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For example, I hosted a fan podcast about Disney's TV show Once Upon a Time.

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Little aside here, note that I didn't say the Once Upon a Time show.

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And we called our podcast simply ONCE.

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In all caps.

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That's the way we always referred to it.

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But we used the domain and social branding of Once Podcast.

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because "Once Show" just didn't sound right. I really had to emphasize that those are two words,

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"Once Show" instead of "Once Show". It just didn't come out right for us. And when I started

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those podcast episodes, I would always say, "You're listening to Once." Like that. I wouldn't say,

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"You're listening to Once Podcast" or "The Once Podcast." I just said, "You're listening to Once."

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And I felt that gave us a really strong brand to just say, "This is our title. Here it is."

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Not "The Once Podcast" but "Once". You're listening to Once. It just sounded so much stronger

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and we were owning it as this is our title. So if you can, don't use the words "podcast" or "show"

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in your podcast title. Moving on to number five, publishing frequency like daily, weekly, monthly,

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etc. This one is easy. If you add publishing frequency to your title, especially to the end,

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then you might be binding yourself to that frequency. If you ever want to change your

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publishing frequency, you would have to change titles. And if you ever skipped a normal publishing

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cycle, then the name has essentially become a lie. If you're the something daily and you don't

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publish daily for a week or something, then you're no longer daily. That's how it works.

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There seems to be a noteworthy difference between using the term at the end of the title versus

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anywhere else in the title. For example, "Daily Bible Reading" versus "Bible Reading Daily".

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Maybe it's only me, but putting "Daily" at the end of the title sounds more like it's a

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news broadcast reporting on something daily and publishing daily while putting the frequency

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anywhere else sounds like it's helping to do that thing daily even if the podcast isn't published

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daily. Another example of this could be "Improving Your Daily Health". So I'm not saying that the

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frequency word itself is bad. It's really how you use it. And you might want to consider

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not using it at all if it's at the end of the title as your publishing frequency part

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of the title and not about what you talk about.

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Number six, obscenities. Apple podcasts used to forbid obscenities in show and episode

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titles or descriptions, really any text in your RSS feed. But they've since removed

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that rule, except for podcast cover art, because their system can now automatically censor

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written obscenities. Nonetheless, I recommend avoiding them in your title because it will

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make it easier for other people to talk about your podcast and reduce some friction some

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people might have in creating content, promoting your podcast, or even following your podcast.

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I know this is slightly controversial and I'm not saying that you should or shouldn't

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obscenities in your podcast. That's up to you. I'm talking about in your title.

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Now, for example, you might have noticed that I never refer to Marc Maron's podcast by its name.

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You probably know the name of his podcast. I don't speak it. This is because I don't use

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profanity and I consider even his show name's abbreviation to be obscene because nearly everyone

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knows what that abbreviation means anyway. So abbreviating it really isn't cleaning it up or

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making it family-friendly. It's similar to if I censored the word "podcast" by removing the vowels

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like that you just heard. You still know I'm saying or writing "podcast" so it wasn't really censored

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because you know exactly what I just said. And before you say "having an obscene title hasn't

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hurt Mark Maron's show? Well, consider that you really can't know that for sure. In fact,

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I wrote an article that I link to in the notes for this episode. Go to theaudacitytopodcast.com/avoidwords

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to get the link to that old article where I discuss why that whole "it hasn't hurt them"

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thinking is really invalid. You basically need a parallel universe to thoroughly test it.

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And, consider this, his show could very easily be even bigger under a different name.

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So you can't know that it hasn't hurt him.

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Just because he's successful doesn't mean he couldn't be more successful if he did

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something different.

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Also, I know of some people who will not listen to or recommend his show exactly because of

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its name, even if the content was the same.

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Plus, other podcast apps and directories might have different rules, especially in other

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countries. Even if your content contains obscenities, it might be prevented from being featured

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or included only because of the name or the cover art. I actually do the same thing when

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I feature podcasts. I won't feature anything with obscenities or profanity in the title

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or cover art. And back to Apple Podcasts, which does censor the text automatically under certain

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circumstances, they do not censor images. And so they have a specific rule that there

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There must not be obscenities in images.

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If your podcast name uses obscenities, then you would have to censor your cover art in

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order to not get kicked out of Apple Podcasts.

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And then that's weakening your visual branding to not have your cover art accurately show

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your title and represent your title exactly.

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So I really suggest you consider not titling your podcast with any obscenities.

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Number seven, with your name.

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To clarify, I'm referring specifically to adding your name to the end of your title,

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like "With John Smith", "With Jane Doe", something like that.

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I'm not referring to building your show title around your personal brand, like

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"The Joe Rogan Experience," "The Mel Robbins Podcast," "The Charlie Kirk Show," or "Conan O'Brien

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Needs a Friend.""

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Those are all built around their personal brands and those are fine titles.

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Instead, I mean tacking on the "with your name" onto the end of your otherwise great

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show title when your name already appears in other places or should appear in other

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places.

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Several years ago, before Apple Podcasts, there was a glitch in iTunes, yes that old

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app, that prevented podcasts from being found by their artist names.

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So if you searched for Daniel J. Lewis, the Audacity 2 podcast would not show up during

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that glitch.

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So back then, a popular podcast consultant advised everyone to put their names in their

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podcast titles so they could still be found.

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This would have meant renaming my show to The Audacity 2 Podcast with Daniel J. Lewis.

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But that was a temporary glitch.

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And it was a glitch.

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I think it lasted for maybe only a few weeks at most.

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Maybe it was even as little as one or two weeks.

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Unfortunately though, that bad advice's damage was already done and a wave of highly

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popular podcasts redundantly included the host names in the show titles.

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And this is unnecessary and redundant for several reasons.

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First, your podcast's artist text should already contain your name and it's almost

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always displayed prominently with the title of your podcast. Title, author, right there,

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next to your cover art, below your cover art, something like that, in almost all the places

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out there. Second, every podcast app I've tested already searches the author or artist text,

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returning podcasts then with your name, even if your name is only in that author or artist text

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and not in the title. And third, voice-based assistants from Apple, Google, Amazon, and

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other assistant tools will often speak or return both the title and author of podcasts

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when you ask for them. So Siri, for example, might respond "Now playing the Audacity

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to Podcast with Daniel J. Lewis by Daniel J. Lewis." It's just redundant and therefore

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unnecessary. This is similar to when Apple started cracking down on keyword-stuffed podcast

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titles back in 2018 when it was no longer a good idea because people abused it to put

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in all of these keywords in your author tag or your title to try and be found for those

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keywords.

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The basic lesson from that, and I did a whole episode about this back in 2018, I have the

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link to it in the notes for this episode at theaudacitytopodcast.com/avoidwords.

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But the main takeaway from that is that text should go where it's supposed to go, not where

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it's not supposed to go.

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And podcast publishing tools have these multiple fields intended for specific content, and

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the content should not be repeated where it's not supposed to be.

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So for example, the title field should have only the title.

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The author or artist field should have only the author or the artist names.

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The description should have only the description.

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Episode title should have only episode titles and not season numbers or episode numbers.

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I've done an episode about that previously too, link in the notes.

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And the copyright field should have only the copyright, and so on.

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The whole purpose for having separate fields is to hold separate information and don't

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let the streams cross.

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I asked my podcast lawyer Gordon Firemark about trademarks.

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And by the way, I earn no commissions by referring his personalized legal services, but I do

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highly recommend him, even though I don't get paid for recommending him.

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He said that putting your name in an otherwise non-distinctive title, like "Daily News with

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Jane Smith" does not make the title any more trademarkable because the title is still

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highly descriptive, not distinctive.

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You're still describing the show as "Daily News with Jane Smith."

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That's not a trademark.

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And so there could be "Daily News with John Doe," "Daily News with Jane Doe," "Daily

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News with Daniel J. Lewis. Those are all not trademarkable and they're not infringing

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on each other. But this does open up another possibility and a reason why you might want

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to put a "with your name" in the title in rare circumstances is when your title

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is so generic that there are many other podcasts with the same title or something extremely

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close. That's when it could be good to make your title a little bit different from the

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others by adding your name, like Daily News with Jane Smith, while there is also the Daily

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News with John Doe, and the Daily News with Daniel J. Lewis, and the Daily News with whoever

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else, even though that can't be trademarked. This non-distinctiveness of the title allows

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other people to do the same thing, using the same words, but adding their name to the title.

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And you can do this too, to add your name to that non-distinctive, descriptive, very

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generic title so you can help your audience be more confident they're picking the right

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podcast when they get to yours.

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Number eight. "Pod" and "Cast". Please avoid the cliche of stabbing your podcast title with pod or

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cast. Your show doesn't need to be pod cooking or cooking cast. And come to think of it,

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other than "pedia" from encyclopedia, I couldn't think of any time the media or distribution

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format was chopped and stabbed into another word in the title. Can you imagine trying

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to make mashups with the word "movie" in titles of movies like StarMovWars or Indiana

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Jones V, or making portmanteaus with "music" in the latest music album titles, it doesn't

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happen and if it did, it would look so weird. So why do we do that with the word "podcast"

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where we're adding "pod" and "cast" to all of these things? I think this meta,

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Cliché portmanteau practice is fine when you're making a product or service for podcasting.

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For example, Podmatch, Castapod, and they get two points there because they're using

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pod and cast but they actually flip it around.

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Or Poddex.

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Clichés aren't always bad, but you should still try to avoid them like the plague.

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Number nine, emoji. [Loud gasp]

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That's me imitating the sound that I imagine the emoji is making that I used for this point

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that you may or may not see in the notes for this episode when you look at it in your podcast app.

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But you can see the emoji over on the website at theaudacitytopodcast.com/avoidwords.

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So emoji isn't actually a word that you're putting in the title, but it is something

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that you might try to put in your title anyway.

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And while emoji can be fun for your cover art or even your episode titles, maybe, avoid

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them in your podcast title.

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Some podcast apps still can't display emoji correctly.

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They might either omit the emoji altogether, or they would replace each emoji with two

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question marks in the title.

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So if you have two emoji next to each other, then you would get four question marks.

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And those question marks can cause some very unintended and unwanted meanings depending

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on the title of your podcast.

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Any place that generates a URL for your podcast might also have problems or make it a really

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messy URL in order to properly encode the Unicode characters necessary to display an

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emoji.

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If you use emoji in your title, you might have to always remind your audience to not

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type the emoji as part of your domain or social network IDs. Nonetheless, your audience might

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try to search for your podcast with the emoji anyway, and how would someone even be sure

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they're using the correct emoji? The emoji I used for this point is called "open mouth".

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I was searching for it as the "wow" emoji because on Facebook you have the option currently

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to react to different posts with more than just simply liking something. You can have

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a heart, a hugging emoji, and there's this one emoji where it's an open mouth and it

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looks like a person saying, "Wow."

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That could be like, "Wow!" or "Wow!"

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And maybe those two inflections mean different things to you.

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So avoid emoji in your podcast title.

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Number 10, hashtags.

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are where there's a word or phrase with no spaces and a pound sign at the beginning of

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it.

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These trigger certain behaviors in some social apps like if you click on that and it brings

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up search results for any other post that contains that same hashtag.

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Or in special places they might even add a hash flag which is where there is an automatic

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emoji that displays along with the hashtag like Apple does this for some of their events

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or you might see this for particular sports events too.

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So whenever you put that particular official hashtag there, this cute little emoji comes

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along with it automatically.

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But they're really pointless in your podcast titles and descriptions.

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They do nothing for your SEO and they will look weird, but not as weird as emoji.

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The only place hashtags are currently of any use is when you post a message on social networks

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like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Mastodon, and even YouTube descriptions,

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but not YouTube titles.

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And in each of these places, I was specific to say it's about when you post a message,

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not even when you're posting a link.

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So you might see in some of these places, when you share a link, that it then embeds

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part of that link into your message post.

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So you can see a preview of the image, maybe a preview of the title, and a preview of an

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excerpt of some sort.

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But if there are hashtags in that preview or embed, that still does nothing for that

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actual post.

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The hashtags only matter in the message that you're posting on those social networks.

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And each of these is a place where you would post about your podcast, not your full podcast

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content itself.

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So while it is good to hashtag the appropriate keywords from your title or description or

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Or however you're promoting your latest episode or your podcast, in the messages you post

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on social networks, don't put the hashtags in your podcast title.

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A good exception to this is when your podcast is about something known by its hashtag, and

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it's primarily known by that hashtag.

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For example, while podcast movement 2022 had its own official hashtag, and that was #PM22,

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capitalization didn't matter, but I always capitalize it anyway because it's an abbreviation.

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That podcasting conference was not primarily known by that hashtag.

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But titling a podcast, and this is the only example I can think of that's a really good

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example of something known by its hashtag.

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So if you title a podcast "#MeToo Survivors,"" where it's just the hashtag is #MeToo, no

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spaces in there, "#MeeToo," that would be instantly recognizable because it was known

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as the #MeToo movement. And thus, this would be a good reason to use a hashtag in the title.

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It was known by that and known primarily by that. People would even say #MeToo. But other

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things like podcast movement, even sometimes when we abbreviate talking about podcast movement

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to each other, we might say "@pm22" but we don't say "@#pm22".

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But don't start hashtagging keywords in your title merely because you think it will

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help your SEO.

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It won't.

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And lastly, number 11.

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Words that aren't your actual podcast title.

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I hope this is obvious by now.

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Your podcast title should be only your podcast title.

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It shouldn't be a tagline or a list of keywords in attempts to manipulate your search engine optimization.

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It should just be your title.

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Adding keywords to a podcast title was very popular before 2018 and even I had recommended

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adding keyword optimized taglines to your title and author tag.

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Not merely a list of keywords but a tagline that maybe had one or two of those relevant

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most important keywords for your podcast.

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For example, The Audacity to Podcast's full title back then was "The Audacity to Podcast

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- How to Launch and Improve Your Podcast."

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And my author text was also using a keyword friendly tagline and it was "Daniel J Lewis

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comma, podcasting industry expert and how-to-podcast teacher."

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See I was getting in there, "podcasting" and "how to podcast."

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This was an effective SEO trick back then, but some people caught on and then abused

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the system with titles that would look like this.

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This is not an actual title, but it is an accurate representation of many of the

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titles I remember seeing back then.

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"My Awesome Podcast - Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Passive Income,

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Relationships, Bitcoin, Business, SEO, and Vanilla Cream Soda.""

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Now that simulated title was 127 characters long, but I've seen some that

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were longer than 250 characters and only the first 20 or so characters were the

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00:38:38,240 --> 00:38:45,800
actual title! The rest was spam! Apple cracked down on this keyword spamming in 2018 and

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I shared some observations and testing around it because I let my podcast get kicked out

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of Apple Podcasts. I wanted to experience what that was like. I wanted to see what triggered

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it to happen and it was as I predicted. It was when my podcast made it into the top 200

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of a chart, that that's when it triggered, and right then is when it got kicked out.

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And I wanted to see what the experience was like interacting with Apple and what they

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said I needed to do and what was acceptable.

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So I let myself get kicked out, even though I knew by that time that I was stretching

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the rules and I would get punished for it at some point.

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But I did that for science.

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And I share those observations in my past episode about that, and I have that link in

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the notes for this episode at theaudacitytopodcast.com/avoidwords.

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Now since 2018 when a lot of podcasters realized they have to clean up their titles.

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Now some podcasters do still do it, yes, but they are not even in the top charts.

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You might see it here and there and you can certainly report that or reach out to the

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podcasters to point out to them that that's bad practice now.

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But now that most of the popular podcasts are no longer keyword stuffing their titles,

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I think it's actually quite nice to see concise titles that are only titles.

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Brilliant!

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There are some exceptions where you can include a short sort of expansion of the title.

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For example, Apple did allow our podcast about Once Upon a Time, the TV show, to remain under

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the title "Once-Once Upon a Time Podcast".

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So that helped us because we could still be found if someone was searching for "Once

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Upon a Time" and it did expand on our very short title, kind of explained the title,

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but it's more just expanding on it.

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And you can find some other even high-ranking podcasts with similarly formatted titles.

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But if your title has to be explained or expanded, then it might not be a good title after all.

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So these 11 things to avoid in your podcast title are number one, ambiguous cuteness.

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Number two, easily misunderstood made up words or mashups.

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Number three, starting with "the".

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Number four, podcast or show.

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Number five, publishing frequency, like daily, weekly, monthly, and such, especially near

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the end of your title.

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00:41:23,900 --> 00:41:25,520
Number six, obscenities.

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Number seven, with your name.

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Number eight, pod and cast.

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00:41:29,980 --> 00:41:31,660
Number nine, emoji.

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Number ten, hashtags.

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And number eleven, words that aren't your actual podcast title.

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If you're in this place of starting a podcast or maybe you have a podcast that uses some

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of these words you should avoid and you're trying to come up with a better title, I would

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love to help you with that.

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I am now available again for one-on-one personal consulting where you get to sit down with

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just me and just you and we can work through these issues to help you come up with a better

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00:41:58,420 --> 00:42:03,040
title or to help you figure out something else that you're facing in podcasting.

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Whether it's a technical issue, a conceptual issue, you need some inspiration, some motivation,

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a good kick in the pants to launch your podcast or you're trying to work some things out.

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If you'd like to hire me for some one-on-one consulting, then please click on the link

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in the notes or you can get that easily from the menu at theaudacitytopodcast.com.

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Now if this episode has been helpful to you or you think it might be helpful and inspirational

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00:42:25,900 --> 00:42:28,060
to anyone else, I'd love it if you would share it.

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And if you have some things to add to this, then please comment on the website as well.

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And I know there might be some disagreement too and I welcome that.

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If you have some other suggestions of things that don't make for good titles, feel free

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00:42:42,700 --> 00:42:43,700
to share them,

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go to theaudacitytodepodcast.com/avoidwords.

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That's also where you can go to share this episode out, get any of the links that I mentioned

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00:42:52,380 --> 00:42:54,460
in this episode and review the notes.

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00:42:54,460 --> 00:42:58,460
Or maybe you can review them and share them with a simple tap or swipe away inside of

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your podcast app.

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Now that I've given you some of the guts and taught you some of the tools, it's time for

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you to go start and grow your own podcast with a great title for passion and profit.

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I'm Daniel J. Lewis from theaudacitytopodcast.com.

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Thanks for listening!

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[MUSIC PLAYING]