You may have started your podcast and decided that the name no longer fits or you want to change the name and format to something else completely. How do you do what and what are some things to think about? On this episode I chat all about how to change and rebrand and also things to consider. I also chat about the news of Google dropping Google Podcasts as well as the new Sure SM7dB

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Welcome to Podcast Answers, the show that I help you start and grow your podcast.

Answering any podcasting questions along the way.

That's right, we are going to be talking today about podcasting.

going to be talking about podcasts rebranding and how to do that.

What are some things you need to think of?

But first, we are going to be talking about Google podcast and how Google

podcast is actually going to be shutting down soon.

That's right.

Google podcast has announced, which Google is their parent company is Google

uh, answered your parent company, Google, uh, announced a few days ago that Google podcasts

would be going away next year. That's right. It's going to going away. They will, they

will be providing a way to move your podcast subscriptions over to YouTube music. This

will most likely be something like an OPML file or something like that that allows you

to take your subscriptions out of Google podcasts and bring them into Google music.

But this is not the first app that Google podcast has killed.

This is, is that not the first podcast that they have.

This is actually, this is their fourth product that, that they're going to be going into

all the other ones have been shut down and Google music will be the fourth app that they're

going to have.

So just kind of a warning for you and to try to figure out what you're going to do and

how you're going to tell your, your, your listeners that they need to be moving to something

new because Google podcasts won't be around anymore and how to direct them to that. So

those are just some things that you need to think about because again, like I said, Google

podcasts is going away and will not be available anymore to, to, to have your podcasts in.

So I'm hoping that Google music is, it works well. We don't, I mean,

we kind of know what to expect. We've seen it around.

You can put your podcast in there, but they're really huge.

A lot of, there's a lot of questions right now because Google podcast says that

you're going to be able to subscribe by a RSS feed.

But I don't think that that's in the app yet.

And what does that mean? Because really their content way to get content in there

right now is through Google or through YouTube.

And so with we're not really sure what that means because it do you are you gonna have to have a video

portion to your podcast or can you go ahead and just use

Audio only and those are things that are that are unknown as of this point

And so those are some things again in the end of 2024

I think is or sometime in 2024 is when Google says that they're going to shut that off

And in other news sure really says the SM

seven DB that's right. The SM seven DB we've had. We've all seen the iconic podcast and

like the shirt SM seven B it's on all a lot of podcasts. It's in a lot of radio. People

love it and it sounds great. Well, they, this SM seven B is a passive dynamic mic, meaning

that there's low output on this mic. So if you plug it into a regular mixer and try to

try to use it, you're going to have to crank that sucker way up and you're going to have

noisy preamps on your podcast or on your mixer.

And that's going to cause lots of hiss and noise in your podcast.

And so to fix that, but a lot of us have been doing is using a cloud lifter.

And so what that does is that bring a cloud list for some other inline

mic booster. And what that does is it brings up the, the gain a lot.

And again, unless you're running the roadcaster pro two, you don't need to

do that with a roadcaster pro two.

it has enough gain, but so you're going to buy a $400 mic and then another $100 in line

booster. So your mic is now more expensive. So sure has released the SM seven DB, which

brings all of the great things that we love about the SM seven B and it also adds some

new tricks. So the SM seven DB has more electronics and it has a lot active electronics, which

means you can now add another either 19 plus 19 db of gain or plus 28 db of gain.

So your mixer receives a louder signal and it does not require that inline signal booster

like we had previously.

So what that will do is you'll provide phantom power and most, most mixers and most, most

things can provide phantom power and, and so that will provide the power to the mic

and be able to, to power that inside electronics.

And so you can just get by with the one mic.

Now rebranding your podcast.

You've been at this for a while and you decided that, that you're, you, the name that you

started with no longer fits for your podcast.

You want to.

Rechain you want to change your name or you like the name, but you really want to rebrand

your podcast with and create fresh branding as far as cover art, as far as themes and

colors.

renaming and rebranding are complete two different things. Renaming is like a whole,

it's a name change. The name that you had no longer fits with the content.

So you want to create a new show, if you will, you want to create some theme.

The name wants to be just a little bit different because you're, you're,

the name that you had no longer specifically fits.

You may want to drop the name podcast from that.

You may want to create something just a little bit different because you don't

like the way that it sounds. Maybe it no longer fits the fact that you have your

company name in the podcast and you're no longer at that company or,

or something like that. And so you want to create a,

you want to rename your show, but the art, the graphic,

all of stuff can stay the same.

Maybe just change the words as far as the name goes.

The sound imaging can stay the same. And you know,

your stingers, your transitions,

the things that you're using to make your sound and your podcast unique can

stay the same when you're renaming the show. It doesn't have to, but it can.

Now rebranding can include a new logo, new cover art, new jingles, new format,

and the name could stay the same.

So I could say, Hey, I want to keep the name podcast answers because I really

like the name podcast answers, but I don't necessarily like the way that the

colors are or the logo is or things like that.

And so I want to change that.

I want to change the jingles.

I want to change the song that I use.

You can do that.

And both of these things can be done pretty easily.

So renaming your show.

and rebranding are things that can be done fairly easily.

And so we're gonna talk a little bit about that today.

So here's some things to think about

when you are rebranding or renaming.

If you change the name,

it's probably a good idea to not completely change topics.

So if you're listening to the podcast answers show,

you probably don't want to call that cars united

and then completely change the topics from podcasting to cars

because your audience isn't gonna be the same.

It's gonna be a completely different audience.

And so you don't want to necessarily confuse your audience

by just 100% switching from one main topic to another topic.

You want to be able to have that.

So you don't wanna do that 'cause they're gonna confuse.

They're not gonna wanna stick with you

because they're not going to be interested. So you're going to see your subscriber rate

is going to, going to drop. You may be, if that's the case, it may be time to kill your

podcast and start a new one or just end the production on your podcast and start a new

one. You can keep your podcast around. If you kill it off, then all of your hosts goes

away, all of your ex media content goes away and you can no longer know anyone can no longer

listen to that. If you just stop producing it, that content can still live and you can

still have that content and people can still get to that content and still listen to your

old shows, but they can't, but you're not going to be producing anything new when it

comes to that.

So it may be time just to kill your podcast off and start a new one or just end the production.

If you're going to completely switch topics, completely switch what you're talking about

in your show, because your audience isn't going to be the same.

It's going to be a different audience that may be like going into the theater and starting

to watch one movie and then halfway through the movie, they just drop the movie and switch

to something different.

You're not going to want that because you are not going to want to see that movie because

the movie that they're showing may not be one you even want to see.

So you don't want to do that.

So one of the things you do want to do though, no matter what you're doing, if you're doing

a rebrand or a rename, you want to let your audience know.

Let them know, warn them that the change is coming.

So you can do this several different ways.

You can show them early maybe by using chapter art or episode art in your podcast episode.

That's going to be different before you full on changes so that they know what to expect

and they know what's coming.

Let them know specifically if a format change is coming or audio imaging is going to change.

Let them know what is going to be changing and why.

So that way they can expect that change.

People don't like change.

And so if they don't know what's coming in, just all of a sudden hits them, they may see

your podcast name change or your podcast artwork change and your imaging change and say, this

is a completely separate podcast.

I didn't subscribe for this, but if you're going to start maybe having a co-host or making

changes to the name or the art or the colors and things like that, let people know so that

they know what to expect.

Say, you know, it's some, you know, maybe you could do, if it's an audio element and

audio imaging, you're changing, maybe do it in one element at a time and do it over a

few weeks.

So maybe change your jingle, your start jingle, maybe change if you have imaging that you're

happening, you know, do that one week.

And then the next week, if you have a segment that you're changing the name on or the changing

the song on, do that in the next one.

So that, that way there's, there's a little bit of time for people to get used to.

So here's the technical thing.

to change your podcast branding or name. It's pretty easy actually guys, for the most part,

go into your podcast host and change the name of your podcast. This will change the name in the feed

and you may not see these changes everywhere right away because directories and apps

are on a sync schedule. Some of them only check once a day, some of them check a couple hours.

And so the directories may not change right away. You're going to want to wait for that. You may

not see the name change in it right away or there may be some technical things that are happening. So

Give it some time and just be able to give it some time once you make that change before

you see it everywhere.

And then sometimes you have to go in and into the directories and force them to sync into

that app or directory.

You can go into podcasts, Apple podcasts, and where you submitted originally, and you can

go in and tell it to resync your directory, or direct your feed.

You can go into places like that.

And so that will allow those directories to right now sync your feed and sync and change

the name to something new. So now for artwork, you need to upload a whole new graphic to

your podcast host. And this is the important thing here is to use a different name than

the previous file. So if your art was named cover art.jpg, the new name should be something

completely different like cover art 2023.jpg or cover art new.jpg. Just make sure it's

different because if if the name has not changed, sometimes the apps will already have that file

cached on their directory or on their app or their directory and they're not going to change it

because they're going to say it's the same name. This is the same file. It's not going to change.

And so they're not going to change. So if your name is new, they'll know to look for something new.

Now, the requirements are going to be the same as it always has been 1400 by 1400 pixels or 3000

by 3000 pixels square, less than 500 kilobytes. And that will allow you to make the change again.

Go with big titles, big things so that when your art is shrunk down, you can see it at a very,

very, very small level. And then remember, directories and apps take time to refresh. Again,

like I said before, different apps take different amount of time and you may need to log into each

directory. And sometimes I found that you need to upload your cover art there, because when you

submitted it, it pulled it, but it doesn't update it on the RSS feed.

So you may need to actually sign into a specific directory and upload your art there.

It doesn't happen a whole lot, but sometimes it does.

And most of them should just update to the new art.

It's probably a good idea if you refresh your artwork every couple of years,

just to stay up to date on the trends and the and keep your podcast looking fresh.

Just like your house, you could leave your house, the same paint in the room forever.

And it would probably be, it would be okay. I mean, it may get a little bit dirty,

but it would probably be okay to have the same paint,

but a new paint color every couple of years keeps things looking fresh and

feeling new and alive. So just like I did,

I actually moved this studio that I'm in from one room to another,

and it's completely changed the look of the studio.

If you're not watching on YouTube,

I would suggest doing that over at youtube.com/apppodcastanswers.

And you can see the new look of the studio here.

I added some new, uh, new elements, like a TV in back of me so that I can, uh, show some

artwork as I'm talking about this, like I'm showing the cover art for this podcast episode

right on, right on my TV.

So again, it's probably a good idea to go through at least a update, a refresh to your

logo or refresh to your cover art every couple of years, just so that you have something

new and something fresh in the directories.

And again, that's, that's, that should be okay.

As like, if you could change the cover art, you don't necessarily need to tell your people

that the cover art is changing as long as the name stays the same and the name is on

the cover art, but people get used to that cover.

And when it changes, it may take them a few minutes to figure out, Oh, your podcast has

changed.

So in closing, if you guys are having trouble doing this, changing in the name of your podcast,

rebranding your podcast, I'm here to help.

I would love to help you out.

Do that doing that podcast dancers.com/connect.

the podcast answers.com/contact. There we go. Is the correct way to get a hold of me

podcastanswers.com/contact. And I love to help people with their podcast 101. If you're

having trouble changing the name of your show, if things aren't syncing in your directory,

this is one way that you can get a hold of me. And I would love to work through some

things with you. I'm actually in the middle of doing this right now with somebody. And

so this is why this topic actually came up because I was working with somebody and their

their name isn't changing in all of the directories. So we're working on trying to get that through.

So again, if you have any questions about podcasting, I would love to answer them for

you. Chances are if you have a question, you are not alone and others will have the same

question. And I want to answer that for you on this show. So please submit questions to

questions. Sorry, please submit questions to podcast answers.com/contact. That's right

guys podcast answers.com/contact will get you a way to contact me and I can answer your

questions. Thanks guys. Have a great weekend. Until next time, keep podcasting.

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