In this episode I talk about how to come up with a name for your podcast. How to check if your name is taken, and some other generally helpful tips when naming your show.

Welcome to Podcast Answers. My name is Andy and I'm your host. And what I like to do is I like to help people start and grow their podcasts, answering any podcast questions along the way.

That's right. Today we are going to be talking about a question that somebody has asked me. But first, I want to let you know that I do this show because I want to help people start podcasting.

So if you want to start podcasting and you need help, you can contact me at podcastanswers.com/contact. And I would love to help you start your show today.

So what are we going to be talking about today? That's right. We are going to be talking about picking a name for your podcast.

So somebody asked me just the other day, "Hey, how do I pick a name? Is it a good name? What do I do? How do I know if it's been taken before?" All of those things.

So I'm going to talk about that today and just talk just a little bit about how you should know, how you can know if your podcast name that you picked is a good name.

So here's the very first thing that you're going to want to do is, "What is your show about?" Let's think about that.

Is your show like, what is it about? What's it for? So in this case, the person that I was working with is going to be talking kind of like community connections.

They're going to be connecting with people in the community and so they're going off of that based on their names.

So they're kind of thinking of names that had to do with community and connections and things like that.

So you want to think about what is going to be a good, something that's going to resonate with your audience as far as that goes.

What's it about? So think of a creative name that describes your show and your audience.

So maybe for one of my podcasts, I'm actually speaking to dads, to fathers, to dudes.

And so our show name is "Dudes and Dads" - Dudes and Dads podcast specifically.

So for that show, that perfectly describes what our audience is because it's talking to fathers about their fatherhood, about trying to create community and engagement with fathers.

And so for that, we thought of a creative name that kind of describes our show and our audience because we wanted dudes and dads kind of like, "Dude dads, what is that? It's a dude dad."

And so that kind of describes Dudes and Dads podcast and that's kind of what we were going on.

And so again, so you need to think about things like what your show is about.

And so I would actually suggest getting a whiteboard out, you know, a dry erase board and going ahead and thinking about those things that just listening out like, what is your show about?

Like what is the main purpose of your show?

And then listening out who your audience is and trying to describe your audience.

And then out of that, trying to create something that's catchy and something that's going to resonate with people and help them know about your show and what it is.

Now, after you pick a name, and so this is one of the things that the person that came to me said is once I, you know, once I picked the name, how do I know if this is going to be a good name?

And so I suggested that they go to podcastindex.org.

And when you do that, you can go ahead and, and you're going to be able to search in the podcast index for all sorts of podcasts.

The podcast index is an open search and open index of podcasting.

And you can go in there and type in your name and then the name of the show that you're talking about.

And you can then see if other other shows have that name.

So for instance, if I search for podcast answers, I see things like Bible Answer Man, ask Father Josh, your Catholic question and answer podcast.

And then I see podcast answers.

So in this case, I would not want to take that name because it's already a podcast.

Now, there is lots of other things that have answers in the name, the church answer podcast, fidelity answers, accounting answers podcast.

Like there's a lot of different podcasts with the name answers in them, but that's not necessarily a bad thing in this case because what it's doing is it's allowing you to see there's not.

I would stick stay away from things that are going to be similar in the name.

So in this case, again, it was things that were that there are, there are different, you know, answer answers in there, you know, podcasts with answers in it.

But the only one that I see in there that says podcast answers is this podcast.

And so that for me, that was a good choice for this podcast name because there wasn't a lot of other podcasts by that same name.

Again, you can, you can have the same name as somebody else.

It's not illegal to have the podcast name, but you can be sued if you have a podcast name that's going to be close that it's going to be trying to be brand confusing.

Like if you go out to go to the Joe Rogan experience, not Joe Rogan may have trademarked that and registered that.

So that maybe not a good thing unless you're going to spend the money to do that.

But if you're talking about like talk about it podcast or let's connect or real talk or things that are kind of going to be used a lot in the podcast space.

Because those are things that a lot of people tend to name it.

Their names are things like that.

So they have things in their name that are let's talk or real talk or things like that.

And those most likely that people aren't going to register those as trademarks because they're kind of generic.

But again, they're kind of generic.

So you don't want to, to have that name because it's going to be so generic that when someone searches for it, if you say, hey guys, I have a podcast and you can go search for me at any where you find your podcast.

When you do that and it's going to be a super generic name.

People aren't going to be able to find your podcast because they're going to be seeing the hundred other people, the thousand other people that have a name that's super similar.

So along the same lines of going to podcast index.org and searching for your podcast.

Another thing that I would suggest doing most podcasts are going to be in the podcast index, but but not all of them would be.

So one of the next things that I would suggest doing is going to Google and just typing in the name of your podcast that you that you want to get.

So in this case, I will Google podcast answers, but then I will also add in Apple podcast and hit enter.

And then I see my listing on Apple podcast.

So you can do that in Google or you can go to if you have an Apple device, you can go right into Apple or into podcast on the Apple device and search for that.

And see if it comes up with something again.

If you have something where there's going to be a lot of name confusion, you're going to want to stick away from that because what it's going to do is it's going to be hard for people to find.

So don't have a generic name.

Yes, you can.

And yes, you can do that, but it's going to be harder to stand out and be unique and have that be something that people are going to be able to find when they're trying to find your podcast.

Now, can you save a name?

So if you have a good podcast that you are wanting, can you save it?

No, you can't save it.

But what I would do and you can go ahead and and start setting up your podcast right away.

So even if you don't plan on releasing your podcast for another one, two, three, four, five months, maybe go out and get podcast hosting for it.

Put up a trailer, record a trailer that says, you know, hey, this is the XYZ podcast and we're coming soon.

Get that submit that to all of the directories, podcasts, index, Apple podcast, that's going to cover you a lot, but go with all of the listing directories.

And so you, while you can't save a specific podcast name, you can do things to start the ball rolling.

And so that that way you can kind of claim previous, previous ownership of that, that podcast name, if you will.

So some of those things you can do again, our get podcast hosting for it, create your artwork, create a trailer episode, just to get that out there now.

And then you can also register a domain name.

So for instance, you may not be using having a website specifically for your podcast, but I would suggest doing that.

So even if you get the hosting from your, your hosting provider, many hosting providers like the one that I like to use.

And that is, is, is captivate. And if you want to check out captivate, you can check that out at podcastinganswers.com/captivate.

And that will take you and get you a trial of, of captivate.

But many hosts like captivate allow you to take a domain name and register that towards the, the, and have that mapped to their, their website that they give you.

And so when you get captivate, you get a website that has all of your episodes on it and things like that.

You can get, you can go out and register. Like for instance, I have podcast answers.com.

You can register that and point that to your podcast hosting or another website.

If you want for me, I'm hosting my own website for, for this, I have web hosting that I use for my actual website for podcasting answers.

So you can start doing those things and get those around that way when you're, when people try to claim your name,

you can say you already have previous art there. You can already have your domain name around.

You can already have your trailer up and things like that.

So a couple of tips again, stay away from the generic names, search your, your, your potential podcast name at podcastindex.org and Apple podcast.

And then you don't need to have also another thing to remember is you don't need to have the name podcast in your name.

It's just technically a show and podcasts is the delivery mechanism, the RSS feed in the podcast and the podcast app.

That's the delivery mechanism of your show, but your show is just really a show.

So most of the time, like if you're listening to a radio broadcast, you're not going to hear this is the whatever, whatever broadcast.

You're, this is going to be the show, like the name of the show.

So again, you don't need to have the words podcast in your podcast title because it is generic in general.

I mean, like podcasting is the delivery mechanism of your show.

And so you just need to go out and actually call it whatever the name of the show is.

Now, again, I didn't follow that originally when I named the dudes and dads podcast.

We named it dudes and dads podcast, but you can do that.

But again, you don't need to because podcasting is just the delivery mechanism of your show.

So you don't need podcast in the name.

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Guys, this has been a great episode and I really enjoyed being able to, to whenever I come up with a new podcast name,

trying to figure out what, what is that podcast is going to be about and exactly what the name is going to be.

So guys, thanks for hanging out with me this week. Another, another episode of podcast answers.

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Guys, have a great week.

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