505. Your Episode Title Decides If Anyone Listens

Marc Ronick  0:00  
Marc, good morning podcasters. Today is Tuesday, April 28 2026 and today we're putting podcast titles to the test. Do they really decide your episode's success? Or are we oversimplifying what actually drives listeners to click Commit and keep coming back for more. So if you're listening live on clubhouse, hit the share button top right hand side of the screen and share it however clubhouse lets you. And if you're catching us via podcast, YouTube, etc, please share this episode with a fellow podcaster. And now give us about 30 seconds, and we'll get things rolling. Thanks for being

Marc Ronick  0:51  
here. The podcasting morning chat is powered by ironic media, helping podcasters launch polish and grow great shows, and by content creators, accountant helping creators build real Business behind their content.

Marc Ronick  1:20  
Good morning again. Podcasting morning chat. Thank you so much for being here. I am your host, Marc Ronick and currently on stage with me, my co hosts. We have Nick naulback, Dr Fay, Ralph East step Sid meadows and Alex Baelish, also tied aka Nikki, is on stage with us from our audience. Good morning to you all. If you want to learn more about my co host, just go to podcasting morning chat, comm slash people, and you'll see why they are always here on stage with me in the mornings. So before we dive into all of the things today, talking about podcast titles and really, I want to put this idea, the following idea on the table this morning, which that statement, your title, decides whether your episode gets heard or seen, not your content, not your effort, your title. So we'll find out how true that is or isn't, and we'll talk a little bit about titles as well. First, I wanted to just give you that little reminder, our show changes times as of Monday, May the Fourth, yes, John in the audience. May the Fourth be with you. Star Trek, fan and yeah. May 4, 8am Eastern is our new time and new show name. We're changing from podcasting morning chat to podcasting morning show. Little side note, if you go to podcasting morning show.com that works now. It'll just redirect you to our our usual website. But as of Monday, podcasting morning show.com will be the thing, and we will be doing the thing at 8am Eastern. We think that this is going to create more guest opportunities for us. And I posted yesterday an announcement about it, and already started been started receiving feedback saying, Oh, that's a time that I can actually make. In the morning, you might start seeing more of me in the mornings. That was a big reason why we made this change, and it's already starting to pay off, and we think that more people will find us at that hour in the morning, whether it's on our video streams or here on clubhouse, we think that more people will be awake in the morning to find us. So we're looking forward to the change. And Dr, did you want to say something?

D.R. Fay  3:37  
Yeah, I have a question about the name change. So this is a question that I get asked often. When you change the name of a show in the middle of a run, what about all the back catalog? Does that radically get changed as well?

Marc Ronick  3:54  
Or no? What do you mean by the back catalog, the episodes like on

D.R. Fay  3:58  
different episodes that we've done up all the episodes that we have done so far. Are they still podcast morning chat, or will they get changed to podcast?

Marc Ronick  4:09  
Well, I mean, no, I'm not going back in and changing everything. I'm not gonna, you know, whatever was labeled as podcasting morning chat will stay that way, but it all still falls under the podcasting Morning Show umbrella. So when you go to our usual RSS feed, or if you find us on Apple or Spotify, or if you listen on our website, which, by the way, I see, our numbers are pretty significant as far as people listening through our website, but you'll get all the past episodes the present episodes all under the podcasting Morning Show umbrella. Okay? Thank you. Thank you for asking. And by the way, if you listened yesterday, we were playing Gemini is new or new and improved, I should say tool, music generating tool. And I'm looking for Ralph has submitted. One for us, and I'm trying to find it, Ralph. And now, of course, I can't. Here we go. I got it. So, Ralph, submitted one now, Ralph, this you did with suno, right? You use suno regularly. That is correct.

Ralph Estep  5:13  
I am a super suno user.

Marc Ronick  5:16  
Okay, so this, we were very impressed with Geminis yesterday. Let's hear if we're equally as impressive with this suno theme song for podcasting morning show.

Speaker 1  5:26  
Good morning podcasters, wake up. Let's go coffee in the club. Hot takes on the flow from the live feed straight to clubhouse. Fam. We building this together. Say your peace is the podcasting on the show. We are where the whole community is driving the talk. You matter your voice, every comment, every quote from the live feed the clubhouse. Let it roll. The show is called podcasting morning show.

Marc Ronick  5:50  
I'm impressed. I like it now. Ralph, what did you What was the prompt you gave suno to do that?

Ralph Estep  5:57  
I said, I want you to give me something that's sort of a rappy feel like, wake up, get ready to go. Let's jump into this new name of the show. So that was the prompt I gave.

Marc Ronick  6:07  
It. Okay, cool. Well, I think it did a pretty nice job. Indeed. I enjoyed it. I was much happier, much more into longer intros and music and all that, but no longer. And so I just, I think maybe we'll just use these. We'll play different themes every so often that we have aI generate, and maybe one day we'll have a listener submitted theme song that would be fun. Maybe we even do a contest or something around that at some point, so we will see. So yeah, thank you for indulging us there. Let's dig into today's show. Like I said, I want to first start by throwing out a statement, and I want to get your reactions. And if you're listening live, you are more than welcome to play along and give your thoughts and opinions. And look, I know we can easily, and I know it'll come up the idea of quote, unquote, it depends. And that is something that we actually say with a badge of honor most times. And let's try to do what we can to avoid that statement if possible. But like I said, you're not, we're not kicking you out if you say it. It's not the end of the world. But I just, I know that's going to be something commonly said. So when you hear that, your title decides whether your episode gets heard or seen. I'll say it again. Your title decides whether your episode gets heard or seen. When you hear that, what feels right about it and what feels off. Because, like I said, this whole it depends thing, if that's really where you're going to go, fine. But I also think there are times where it feels right, there are times where it feels wrong. Alex wants to be the first to chime in. Alex, what do you what do you got?

Alex B  7:53  
Well, it depends. It doesn't really depend. Actually, it's very important. And if people want to, you know, say I'm wrong. I mean, for what I do, when I do show reviews or movie reviews, it doesn't depend. It's what people are looking for. It's what's searchable. You know, if it's a show and it's the wrong episode of the show, not of the podcast, people are going to be on the wrong thing. Or if it's a reaction to certain things, so it doesn't depend. Actually, I think it's important, but I also don't think that you need to spend hours upon hours trying to figure out the right title either. I think that clear and concise is where to where it's at. But I did have a question for what Dr asked before? Okay? Which question?

Marc Ronick  8:41  
What did she ask before?

Alex B  8:43  
No, I'm just saying about the with the change of name, are we going to start with Episode One, or are we starting with episode 500 and whatever

Marc Ronick  8:51  
we're starting with? Well, today is 505. So it'll be, well, it'll continue the

Alex B  8:57  
I know that's a big thing when you when you change a name, that's the only reason why that

Marc Ronick  9:00  
is a question that people often ask me, yes, you're right, but yeah, we're gonna keep it all going because it's all the same show. We're not

Alex B  9:06  
changing the format. But back to the original question. I don't think it depends. I think people need to understand it's about searchability, and they want to know what they're listening to. So I think it's not really, it's definitely not. It depends.

Marc Ronick  9:23  
Okay, no, that's fair. I appreciate that. And Ralph, I see you want to chime in as well. What do you got for us? What do you think your title decides whether your episode gets heard or seen?

Ralph Estep  9:33  
I think the title is super important on my daily show. I guess it's been about 18 months ago I made a change where every title is a question, every day it's a question. And what I found is it really did increase the listenership, because I basically put it out there. Hey, what if you know, here's what's going on. Ask a question. I find it to be super important, and I don't necessarily think it brings in new listeners, but I think it reinforced. Your existing listeners. I've heard many people say the number of people that listen is not your full audience, so that's where I think a title is super important. I shared my title today for my content creator show, because I think you have to really pay attention to the title, and honestly, and this may be unpopular, I think you've got to spend as much time on your title as you do on the content, because that title is going it's sort of like when you go fishing, right? You get your hook, you put that bait on the hook. Well, if there's no bait on the hook, the fish isn't going to bite it. So I think you've really got to pay attention to that. And honestly, oftentimes now I start with the title before I even build the episode, I start with, what is it I'm trying to convey? Because I think there's an intentionality to that, that's

Marc Ronick  10:47  
I like that strategy. There's some stuff going on in the chat here as well. And I was curious if John would elaborate. John said he's not a fan. I'm trying to find where he actually said that he's not a fan of the five the titles that start. Five ways to do this, which hilarious. That's what yesterday's how our title started yesterday, or he doesn't. Also, another example he doesn't like is, here's three reasons why dot, dot, dot. I'm curious. John's joined us on the stage. What don't you like about those?

Speaker 2  11:17  
Everybody uses them, and it's funny. I'm not going to use the term, it depends. But if your show's an interview show, I think you lead with your guests. Because if I'm just going to use Joe Rogan, I look at your Joe Rogan show, and if it's a guest I want to listen to, I listen to the show. If it's not, I just pass by it. There's some podcasts I listen to for information this podcast. So you know your five reasons for whatever would work. Some podcasts are just like a Hangout, Talk Show podcast. So a lot of times the title will be just something that happened in the show that is either funny. So I just see some marketer went one day. Hey, you know, what? If we use five ways to do this, this will drag people in. It might. But every time I see it, I'm like, look, there it is again. I don't know, it's just me. You know,

Marc Ronick  12:11  
it could be what you're getting at here is that it's played out. Because the reality is that, yes, you're right. In marketing, they did figure out that does actually grab attention using numbers in the title traditionally works really well. It captures people's attention for whatever reason. Taking that a layer further, they also say that odd numbers works better than even numbers, surprisingly enough, for whatever reason. So if you go three, five, yeah. I know. Alex, yeah. Did you know the actual reason?

Alex B  12:43  
Actually, I do know the actual answer. The reason being is we, that's the way we learn. If you ever take your phone number, it's three, three and four. And I understand, like, when you learn you want three steps, because that odd number, for some reason in our brain, yeah, likes it better, and even numbers just don't are more soothing, as opposed to an odd number, which is off, and that's why a lot of this stuff is the way it is during teaching. That's a very big thing, three steps, whether your coach, whether your teacher, whatever else. But I know

Marc Ronick  13:16  
Dr had something. And also, yeah, and I'm going to get to her in one second. And I also agree with John that it might those types of titles might not work well with certain types of shows, right? Like informational shows, value based shows, yeah, that might work, but an entertainment comedy style show, John, I used to do a pop culture comedy ish type show for several years, and our titles always ended up just being a line from the show, like you were saying something that was really funny that happened that, yeah, as far as searchability goes, probably wasn't doing us any favors, but our audience knew, Okay, I'm gonna be listening now for that specific line, because they knew that's what I was doing. You know, it's funny.

Speaker 2  13:59  
I think we should start something here, just as a marketer, and watch everybody fall in line. Only use prime numbers. Only prime numbers, the three ways, the you know, the five ways, something like that, and everybody would fall in line. Here's my pet peeve of all, putting the number of your episode first, where it says episode 323, the five ways. And you run out of real estate, you're like, five ways to what that bothers me?

Marc Ronick  14:24  
Yeah, well, John, apparently our titles just bother the heck out of you, because I've gone back and forth. I sometimes go through these phases where I want all the episode numbers in the title, because I want people to know what episode number, and it's easier to find if I go back and refer to that episode number. But then, like you said, it bothers me, because it does take up real estate.

Speaker 2  14:46  
So Marc, guess what I do? I put it at the end. It's title, and then a line, and then 407, and then this way, if you search the title for you know, for the number, it pops right up. But it doesn't take. Up the front real estate. That's how I do it. Yeah, that's fair.

Marc Ronick  15:03  
I think that can work too. And Dave in the chat says he tried moving the guest name to the end of the title and the content value first. That's what Dave I usually encourage my clients to do, and what I tried to do as well. Even with guests, I do like to put them at the end, unless they're a name that most people would recognize. If it's a name that captures attention, I'm going to put that in the front, because that's that's the value base that I'm going with. But otherwise, if it's a name that I know would be I know that the guests themselves are going to bring value. Great. I'll put that at the end. But if my audience doesn't know who this person is yet, I'm not leading with them. Dr, thank you for waiting patiently. What did you want to add? As it's egg time?

D.R. Fay  15:48  
Well, I already did the eggs. I didn't go early. Good, so y'all just repeated exactly what I was gonna say. Number one, I was gonna mention to John that a lot of people think that if, unless it's a well known name, why waste that real estate, you know, on the name of the guest, and I sometimes start with a number, but that pipe is that what it's called, the pipe symbol. Do you know I'm saying the line, oh, yeah, the vertical line, yeah, yeah. No, not the dash. Oh yes, I know exactly what you mean. Yes, yeah. So sometimes I put that vertical line there for, you know, Episode 532, vertical line six ways to blah, blah, blah, but yeah, it hasn't really affected the, you know the listenership at all for me, from when I look at the stats, but look at all the

Speaker 2  16:44  
real estate you wasted. Episode, count the characters. Episode, space, number.

D.R. Fay  16:49  
Space, we're not putting the word episode, we're just putting the three digits.

Speaker 2  16:55  
Okay, so even the three digits, space, pipeline. Space, start. So you've got 346, you've wasted six characters of your title. Why can't you put it at the end? It does the same thing.

Marc Ronick  17:07  
I think for again, it's for the ease of the audience, for them to be able to find it quickly. Because, like to your point, John, if we're taking up all the real estate, then it's harder for them to find the episode number at the end of the title.

Unknown Speaker  17:20  
But the only time you would okay, this is a pet peeve of mine,

Marc Ronick  17:22  
and I apologize. No, it's okay. This is about titles. Let's hear it. So the

Speaker 2  17:27  
pet peeve of mine is the only reason you're going to use a number. If someone says, Hey, go back to Episode 300 to check it out. So you go to the title or the podcast in or the name of the podcast, and then 300 and it'll automatically pop up, no matter where it is in the title. But when you waste the beginning of that, that six characters in the beginning of the title, it seems to me, it's just it could do the same thing at the end. Nobody's looking for episode 300 in the beginning. I don't think so. Again, it could be me. I could be wrong, but it just seems to me, nothing drives me crazy. It's like, hey, or the title will be something, and you get to, like, what is it? And it's dot, dot, dot, because you run out of real estate.

D.R. Fay  18:07  
But also, that's a whole other discussion about don't number the episodes. I'm in the I'm in the camp where I do number the episodes. But yeah,

Alex B  18:18  
it's a strategy, John, so that you have to click to do it. That's why it's just there to annoy the hell out of you. It works. It's doing its job. And I think Joe Rogan starting to do that. So then you and Dr will actually have a support group together.

Marc Ronick  18:34  
Let me go to Stacey Sherman, who's joined us from the audience. Good morning, Stacy. Welcome back. And yeah, what did you want to add to all this?

Stacy Sherman  18:43  
Good morning. Great topic. My you're making me think a little bit differently, which I love. And my question or thought, would love to know your thoughts is I put my guest name in the at the end, and you're making me rethink, rather than put the person's name, my audience is executives at different companies, so I'm putting the person's name. You probably wouldn't know the name, but you would know Google, Microsoft, IBM. So now I'm wondering, Am I better off putting that the company name versus the person's name. Do you have an opinion?

Marc Ronick  19:25  
I got a little distracted. I'm going to admit. Okay, so Nick's gonna respond first to save me here. I got distracted. Sorry, he's a little tech issue. But let's go to easy.

Stacy Sherman  19:37  
Yeah, I was gonna say it's very easy. Do I put the company name that's very recognizable, IBM, Google, Microsoft, yes. Or up till now, I've been putting the guest name who's like an executive at those companies. But many people may not know their name, but they know the company. So should I be shifting?

Marc Ronick  19:56  
I would personally say, like, if using your well, let's just use an example. Of Apple. Let's just say, or let's use yours. Let's say it's IBM or Microsoft's Bill Gates. That's how I would do it. Microsoft's Bill Gates, like that would probably be my first three words of my title, because those are probably the most recognizable words to use for anybody who's browsing through your titles, me

Stacy Sherman  20:21  
personally at the beginning, instead of saying what the topic is,

Marc Ronick  20:25  
yeah, I would actually say Microsoft, Microsoft's Bill Gates, and then, you know, some either statement he made on the show, or whatever the topic discusses. This topic, that's how I personally would start it, because I think that's what's going to catch the most eyeballs in the most interest to keep reading the title. Did anyone else want to chime in? Does anyone else feel differently?

Ralph Estep  20:48  
Feel differently? I think that I don't care who it is, and I don't care what company they're from. What's in it for me, what are you delivering for me? I think that is a much more impactful title. That's my personal opinion. I just think you know where you were going with that, like Bill Gates talks about, or Bill Gates says or something like that. I think is is better, but I really think your title should be an enticement to why the person wants to click play and not just keep scrolling to the

Marc Ronick  21:16  
next thing. Yeah. I mean, if I'm doing a show about tech. If my show is all about tech and it, I believe that my audience, it would capture their attention. If I then am leading with a big name, like a Bill Gates, I think they're, they are interested, and they're going to say, Ooh, this is something that it's for me, right? Like, I want to hear what Bill Gates has to say about X, Y, Z, right? I don't know why I keep using Bill Gates, especially, I know he's been a little controversial in the news

Ralph Estep  21:47  
lately, but you just, but Martin has clarified that you said what he has to say about, yeah, and I think that's the value, right there is you've got to put in, what is i? What am I going to get from this? So that's why I'm saying to answer Stacy. I think the name of the business, that's great, the name of the person, that's great. But what is the key takeaway? Why do I want to click listen to this?

Marc Ronick  22:09  
Yeah, and John says in the chat here, or should we put the title in our episode artwork? I would say no, because that episode artwork really appears pretty small on most screens when we're talking about mobile, right? So I just think it'll get kind of lost and swallowed up in the artwork itself. So I personally would avoid that. BC, welcome. Hadn't actually said hello to you yet today. Would you? Did you want to chime in? Well, good, yes.

BC Babbles  22:35  
Good morning, everyone. I fell asleep before the show started, so that's why I'm here

Marc Ronick  22:38  
now, at least not during the show. We thank you. We put out some video. By the way, I'll put it in the show notes. Today, we have some clips of BC falling asleep last week during the show. He gave me a good chuckle. I hope he gave some others a chuckle too. And thank you BC for allowing us to put that up there and being a good sport

BC Babbles  22:56  
about it. Yeah, it's all in today's work. I was gonna say, you know, this kind of goes back to, we had a conversation before when I think, when it comes to titles, it's got to be, you got to figure out, Okay, we just had this conversation. What question did this conversation answer? What solutions does this conversation provide, regardless of the guest's name? I mean, if you have a guest who's got a very clickable, viral name, like Bill Gates that you're stuck on this morning. Marc, great, but I think it's got to be okay. What is this episode going to provide to the audience? And then that's got to be the title of the episode, otherwise it could just kind of get lost in the fray. If you try to go for something that seems Hot Topic, viral, and it might miss the mark in that sense.

Stacy Sherman  23:44  
So let me clarify, and I appreciate everybody's response. So currently, I put the what's in it for you, what you're going to learn, and at the end, I'm putting the executive's name. At the end, I'm not putting the company. So I think the question I see is, should I be adding Google instead of just Joe schmoes name?

Marc Ronick  24:08  
I personally would, if it's a name like Google, but if it's not necessarily a name that people would recognize right from the get go, right when they see it, I probably would just stick with the guest name, going back to what John was talking about earlier, about real estate. But BC, what

BC Babbles  24:24  
did you want to add? If I can, I would also consider, does the person that you're guessing on your show are they only known as an executive for a company. They may also be their own kind of portfolio builder. They might otherwise be some kind of TED Talk person. They might be some other kind of, you know, consultant who's known for other work that might have more weight than just their role as an executive for a company. So considering that, might help me shift going from their name to their company name in the title of the episode.

Stacy Sherman  24:57  
Yeah, that's very fair like Seth. Godin is an example where he's an author. He's not necessarily a B to B business executive. So in those cases, yeah, I use, I do that. Majority are companies B to B show Yes, yes. And Seth Godin

Marc Ronick  25:15  
a brand name in itself, like that. He's a name that a lot of people just recognize as the brand, so it works also by itself. Anyway, that's high. Do you wanted to throw something in there?

Speaker 3  25:26  
Thank you. Sorry I was putting my seatbelt on trying to anyway. But yeah, I was just gonna say that for me, the search ability of the title is really important, and that it could just be for me. But speaking of Bill Gates, I have searched for things like, what did Bill Gates say about vaccines, or what did Bill Gates say about this or that? And if I search that and the title is congruent with that discussion or whatever, then I'm probably going to land more on your podcast, because it's directly what I've been looking for. I'm not going to necessarily click on something because of a name or necessarily because it offers me a particular solution, or something like that. Usually I'm looking for something very, very, very specific, and that's the title for me, is going to draw me into that if I feel like I'm going to

Marc Ronick  26:14  
get that information. Thank you for that. Nikki Stacy, did you want to respond?

Stacy Sherman  26:19  
Yeah, so something I've been learning a lot to that very point is that I've actually starting, just recently, creating a Q and A section on my landing page that is letting the AI and humans pick up on that. So Q and A from your existing shows, not necessarily in the title, but literally what you just said, it's going to bring more visibility.

Marc Ronick  26:45  
Thank you. Stacey, yeah, great point. And Sid, did you want to chime in?

Sid Meadows  26:48  
Yes. Good morning, everybody. I have a couple of thoughts on this, so always default back to my behavior when I'm looking at my favorite podcast that maybe I haven't listened to a while, and I'm scrolling through the episodes I haven't listened to, that's first thing I'm doing. I'm looking at the title, and the title is going to decide whether I hit play or

Marc Ronick  27:05  
not me too.

Sid Meadows  27:06  
So that's my behavior. It's got to address. To Nikki's point, the problem I'm looking for what I'm looking for at that very moment. That's why I went to that show that I haven't listened to in a while, because I know they talk about X, Y and Z, so I'm always paying attention to my behavior, but to Drs point, we lost the yard down into the audience.

Marc Ronick  27:24  
Did you punch? I had to put her in the audience because she had her mic open when she switched over to video, so I just had to quiet it down.

Sid Meadows  27:33  
She's in the corner. Baby's in the corner. That's right the other day, and everybody's sitting around this. Characters are limited, and that is an SEO rich location, right? So you got to think about what's going to get picked up, not just by SEO, but by the podcast SEO. What are people putting in the search bar that are going to let your episode pop up, right? And so use it wisely. I do not put episode numbers in it at all. Again, that's conversation for other day, but I do not put episode numbers in it on my cover art that's on my website is includes the episode number, not the player art, because the player art is different, but the actual website card is what we call it, has the actual number on it. And the last thing I'm saying is, I am going to play follow the leader with Stacey, because I learned that she was doing this last week when we were together. And I'm like, That's freaking brilliant. Yeah, she sent me an example, and I'm going to start going through some of our episodes. And honestly, I'm going to use AI. I'm going to ask my friend chat GPT, what if this from based on this transcript, what are the top three questions and answers that or, you know, whatever the prompt is going to be, something like that, to get those top three or four questions, and I'm going to add them there, because that's going to, again, add, add for discoverability, because I'm going to put it in the text, not on an image, and I'm thinking about even adding it into the show notes. I know I'm going to put up the page, but I'm thinking I might add it to the show notes, because that will also lead to discoverability there. So Stacy sent me an example of it this morning, and I'm going to go in and play around with it to this week and test it and see what happens.

Marc Ronick  29:08  
Yeah, thank you for calling that out. That is a brilliant idea. I love that idea. And I was just thinking, as you said it Sid, I was wondering if you're going to also do that with your show notes. I think that's a great place to do that too for SEO purposes. And I

Sid Meadows  29:21  
will say there's limited real estate there too, right? I mean, you don't have that much space, right?

Marc Ronick  29:25  
Okay, you but you get, like, I think it's like 4000 characters or something like that for your episode description. So you should have plenty. If you're already maximizing that, then you're going to have to make some changes. But if you're not, then, yeah, I think that could work just fine. What I was going to say is, look, this is maybe it's a common argument or a common debate, SEO. In my opinion, this is what we're talking about, SEO versus audience convenience, right? Who are we really catering to with these titles? Is it important that we only focus on SEO and that? And why I'm asking that is. Because to your point, to John's point, the real estate and oh, we can't put the those three numbers in the front of the title. Those three numbers being your episode number. We can't do that. It's wasting real estate, real estate. The algorithms don't care about that. It's not SEO friendly. But when you know to Sid's point the way I personally am searching. I do look for episode numbers, especially if I'm listening to an episode and my the host I'm listening to says, Oh yeah, back in episode 122, well, if it's not listed there, if I can't find 122 then I that's gone. It's lost. And that host just lost a download and some listener retention numbers. So however,

Sid Meadows  30:45  
Marc, yeah, if you as a host say, Oh, well, you know, in Episode 386 we talked about, boom, boom, boom, and you don't link that in your show notes, you're being a bad host, because I'm not going to go searching for it. I am not going to search for it. I'm going to click on the show notes and click that link and open if it's not there, and that's with anything that you say that you're referencing, and you say, Well, put it in the show notes, and you don't you're being a bad host.

Marc Ronick  31:11  
I agree with you, and yes, I do that too. I like to just create as many conveniences as I possibly can for my audience. But you make a very valid point. I can't argue that you, if you're going to reference an episode, link to it. I don't know how many times I've had that conversation with clients. It's an easy thing to forget, and I'm sure we've forgotten before, like we've said we're going to link to something and we didn't, right, but we do our best. And yeah, great point. Sid, so All right, Dr, did you have something else? I saw your hand was up. Well, I

D.R. Fay  31:44  
was just gonna say, not only do you have to think about as a host, not only do you have to think about, you know, it's in the show notes, go to the show notes, and the link will be there, but you also have to think about, do you speak on stages, and maybe the talk that you're giving is actually a topic that you did 17 episodes ago. And so that's why these episode numbers are so helpful, because to your audience, you're going to say, make sure to catch episode. You know, 352, where I talk about monetization, and five, 570 I talked about monetization on that one as well, and we also covered monetization on episode 17. So it also helps in that respect as well. And also, I put the guests name in the author part of you know when you're filling out on your host. I put it in the author section right after. I'll put, you know, business coach Deb bolanger, which client of mine, comma, leadership coach Jane Doe, or whatever the name

Marc Ronick  32:55  
is, okay? Yeah. All makes sense. All good points. Thank you, Dr, and by the way, I don't think we've really know, I don't know that anybody here has yet to say, well, maybe a couple of people, but yet to agree or disagree with that statement. Just as far as episode titles being an extremely valuable I know that's not the actuals. I'll pull that up in a second, but I do want to find out how important are titles. That's really one of the big questions today. And of course, yes, we want to figure out what's the most effective titles, too. And somebody in the chat here, Stacey, asked, what platform do we use to write titles and get ranking? Do we have a favorite tool? So with that, Ralph, I saw you. You chimed in the chat. Would you share here out loud?

Ralph Estep  33:43  
I do. I use vid IQ. I'm one of their power pack, so anytime we do any audio or video, we go to vid IQ to test it. And it's been really effective for me. In fact, oftentimes we'll go back into our catalog and re title things, and I found that does move the needle sometimes, because they're really looking at impactful titles. It's been super, super helpful. But I want to interject one other thing, sure, as we were talking about these episode numbers, use your website and point them to your featured episodes, because there's real estate on your website. If you're going to be talking about a particular episode, say, hey, go to our featured episodes. It's in our featured episodes. I actually think that's more impactful than an episode number, but I just wanted to throw that out there, because there's a, if you have a, if you have a good website, that's something you can use, that will people, and you're reinforcing your brand, you're taking them back to your place that you own. And I just think that's easier than saying, well, go to Episode 300 then they're sitting there on their thing, scroll. Their thing, scrolling through trying to find 300

Marc Ronick  34:45  
Yeah, fair enough. Thank you, Ralph. And Ralph actually walked me through vid IQ, I think it was a week ago, and I was very impressed. I've heard so much about it. I know so many people use it, and I just hadn't really looked at it yet. And it's really impressive. Of all the different areas that it can help you with your content. It'll really analyze everything about say your YouTube video and tell you exactly where it can prove and how to improve it. It is really impressive. I have a tool that I created myself, and I'm sharing it here, and we will share it in the show notes as well. I created a custom GPT that's based off of literally 1000s of episodes, both YouTube and podcast, popular podcasts, and they're popular episodes. And it basically I had it analyze all of the different episodes, and I created it as a title generator. So now what I do for every episode is, when the episode's over, I give it the transcript, and I tell it to give me a variety of titles. And yes, John, it does give me number titles as part of its suggestions another type of title. It'll give me our negative based hooks, because that also apparently attracts more attention when you write a hook negatively. I hate that, like I don't like to put out negative phrases and terms. I think that our words are important, but I do know that sometimes that's going to attract more attention. So I might choose from one of those. It has several different types of titles that it's deemed as important, as valuable as ones that can work really well. And this is something free that I usually share with my clients, that I'm sharing with you here today. It's podcasting, morning chat.com/title, Gen g e n, as in generator. So if you're interested in that, give it a whirl and let me know what you think it's done. It's been a great help. I've noticed especially with our live videos, because I apply it to our live videos after they're done and archived, and I've noticed a pretty significant uptick in our views since I've started using this generator for our YouTube Live videos. Tide, did you want to ask a question, or did you have something

Speaker 3  37:02  
I did want to ask a question. When you said negative, were you referring to negative in the sense that it's like, negative, click, baby, bad, all of that. Or were you referring to negative as in, like, having a knot in the title, like, why you shouldn't or should not do this? What?

Marc Ronick  37:16  
What negative did? I think it actually could be either or. It can be either or. And, yes, I mean, look, I don't like to say it's click baity, because I really, if it feels click baity to me, I actually avoid it. But yes, it is negative stuff, like this thing that you're doing. You know, this is not probably the best structure of the title, but basically the idea of negativity is, you know, this thing, your titles are killing your podcast. There you go. That's one like to apply to this episode. I don't know that I'm going to use that, but that would be the idea of a type of negative title, yeah, but it couldn't also say things like, you know, don't do this. You shouldn't do that, like, that's also considered negative based. So let me know how what you guys think? Yes. Dr, did you have something? No, she's like, Oh no, I didn't have anything to say.

Ralph Estep  38:10  
Okay, cool, Marc, I'll jump in there with the negative, because I think negative works. And I think it's because as you're driving down the road and you see a car wreck, your head turns and looks at the car wreck, and you do the same thing with a title. It works for me, and I don't do it all the time, because you can become like that negative guy, but I do think it draws your attention.

Marc Ronick  38:30  
It definitely does. It definitely does. And I'm curious, how do others find specific episodes? How important are titles to you when you're looking for a podcast like Sid said, If Sid's gone back to a podcast that was, you know, one of his favorites, or maybe even, I assume, at least this is for me, if somebody says, hey, you've got to check out this podcast, and they just give me the overall series title, you know, they don't give me a specific episode, I'll go, and that's what I'm going to do, is I'm going to scroll through The episodes, and all I'm looking at are the titles. What's got me interested. And when I find something, I stop. I'll click on it. I don't necessarily hit play right away. I might if the title really grabs my attention, but that's what it's going to first, at the very least, grab my attention enough to tap on it and read the description next, and if I'm sold at that point, then you're definitely getting a play out of me. But those titles feel super important when I think about the way that I'm using them

Ralph Estep  39:32  
into but do you go into the podcast app and search? Because I don't know too many people that do that. I think most people go on to Google and search or go into YouTube and search. But how many people act and I could be wrong, how many people actually go into their podcast app and search? I don't know the answer to that.

Marc Ronick  39:48  
No, I personally will search for a podcast within the player, but I am not necessarily searching. I might do a search for like ADHD if I'm curious. Us about an ADHD podcast. I don't know which one, or, you know, I don't want to listen to my usual ones, so I might search ADHD, but I'm not. My personal way of searching on a podcast platform is not super specific. The way I would search for something on Google, for example, or I would go into an AI to get deeper. So, yeah, John, you had something, and then we'll go back to Sid.

Speaker 2  40:23  
All right, so I was just thinking about this, how I search for podcasts. So if it's a podcast that I have subscribed to, when I go down to listen to the 50 that I'm subscribed to, I look at the titles. But now I'm really interested in artificial intelligence. I do go to my podcast player, which is overcast, and search artificial intelligence. I tried AI that gives you a whole bunch of different ones, because I'm trying to find podcasts that are talking about artificial intelligence. And it's really weird, I search for podcasts differently than I search for videos on YouTube. So that's something I want to think about now that maybe we should start to try to incorporate something in our titles the way you would search in YouTube too. It's a great, this is a great topic because I never thought about this, but titles this much in my entire career.

Marc Ronick  41:16  
Well, good. I'm glad, I'm glad it's helpful. John, thank you. Yeah, I'm actually that's been my latest experiment these days, is I'm actually curious. I'm look my generator that I just shared with you was originally based more on YouTube videos than podcast specific. Of course, a lot of the YouTube videos are also podcasts, but I am approaching my titles the same way for my podcast.

Speaker 2  41:41  
So here's a question. You have your podcast and then you have your video. I always go back and change the title of when I live stream to the title of the podcast. Do I have to? No, I don't have to. My YouTube title could be different for searchability than my podcast title. I do

Marc Ronick  42:01  
two different titles for my live video versus the podcast title. So my live there are very similar, but one of the things I think, is that YouTube might not like that if I have two different videos with the same title. I'm not sure, but I feel like maybe the algorithm wouldn't love that, just the same way that I know it wouldn't love if we're uploading the same video exactly with the same title and all that. So I'm just trying to be a little more creative and give the live video a different title than the podcast episode. That's what I do. Sid, what did you want to add? I think

Sid Meadows  42:37  
about Google and YouTube. In the way that we search, we're asking a question. Tell me how to monetize my podcast. That's a question you could put inside a question, to be fair. Well, tell me or what are ways to monetize my podcast, right? It's a question that you could ask Google, get an answer, and it's also a question you could ask the what I would refer to as the University of YouTube to go learn something. And a lot of people use YouTube that way to go learn something. That's not something you're going to type inside the podcast player. How come you're going to type inside the podcast player? Podcast monetization? That's just my opinion. But when you listen to people like Courtney Elmer, who is the host of the secrets of the top 100 podcast he spent hours talking about podcast CEO did a course around podcast SEO, I think you understand the value that more and more and more people are searching inside the player for content that they're interested in, like mindset, or whatever it might be. You're going to go up into the player and you're going to click on mindset, and you're going to get episodes that have the mindset in the title. You're going to get shows a tab you can push on for shows that list all the shows that have that talk about mindset, right? So I think it's just, I think it's you. That's how I use it again. I look at my behavior. I don't put a question inside the podcast player. I put a question inside of YouTube or a question inside of Google.

Marc Ronick  43:55  
So I appreciate that. And you're right. That's like I said, that's how I basically search, too. Is I'm searching just like a keyword. I'm not putting in the question like I might on Google or in YouTube, but my question is, is, why not? Why don't we try that and see what happens? Right? Like, I'm game. I can try that right? Like, because I think it's more of our habits, because for so long, I think that the podcast player that the way we interacted with it for years was just that we was typing in a show name or typing in one keyword and seeing what comes up. But I'm curious, why aren't we using it more like a search engine? Who knows? I think, just as a user, and also that's the other thing is, I wonder how newer podcast listeners, people who are newer to the podcast experience. I wonder if they're using it like us Sid, or if they're actually using it more like a YouTube search, because that's where they're probably used to getting their content. And if now they're introduced in a part of the podcast world, maybe they're using their their searches in a. Very similar way. Who knows?

Sid Meadows  45:02  
So I just did it, yeah. And I typed in the question, how do I monetize my podcast? And I got top results that keep strolling, most of them from Pat Flynn, right? He's number three on that search. If I did that, was the top results on shows. He's number one on the actual show list. But then it goes to ask the podcast coach with Dave, Dave Jackson, and then the next one is real estate survivals guide. Well, that doesn't about podcasting, right? But then Courtney Elmer shows up as the next one. So, and then I look at episodes, it's got the how do I monetize is in the title, okay, so that's what, how do I because, like, the reason Pat's showing up so much is, how do I monetize my course, my parenting site, yeah, my business after so that's picking up the specific keyword. How do I modify so it does look like, yeah, it's going to give you some pretty decent results based on the question. So I may try that, continue to try that one, to see when I'm searching for something and change my behavior and see if I get better results.

Marc Ronick  46:02  
Right? I just searched for on Apple podcasts, how do I focus more with ADHD? And the top result is from a podcast called, do I have ADHD? And it's episode and by the way, she starts it, Episode 110 EP 110 and the title is, more ways to focus with ADHD, and I am impressed she actually the title has more than one title in it. It says more ways to focus with ADHD, and then it uses that pipe that Dr was talking about, the vertical line. Then it says how to focus with ADHD pipe, focus tips for ADHD adults. I think that that is a really smart way look. It's the first time I'm really thinking about it this way. But add but phrasing, adding multiple phrases to the title that are short, sweet, directly to the point. I think that there's something to be said about that. And I'm looking here all of the at least these first we'll call them five to 10 episodes that of the top results all apply to what I was looking for. Here, another one from a show. The title is ADHD, how to break the paralysis cycle, right? So, yeah, I think that if we start using our search a little bit more like we would use a Google or YouTube search, we might find better results. Maybe we need to educate audiences more about how to search on the podcast players, I don't know,

Sid Meadows  47:31  
so I wonder if she's using a tool like answer the public could be to get the questions that people are asking around ADHD, because she's put three, basically three separate titles in that episode, which every one of them is something that somebody is likely searching for. So it's going to pop up, right? Because she put the pipe there. And that's basically three separate titles, in my opinion. So she could be using an answer in the public or even

D.R. Fay  47:56  
just Google. Just when you go to Google, there is people are also asking, and then they have like, those three questions in Google.

Marc Ronick  48:05  
Yeah, that could very well be interesting discussion here. All right, so I think we've kind of gone through what makes titles effective, right? But let's see, is there anything else we should be thinking about in our title since we're here now, in this area of the conversation, do you think, you know we've talked about real estate? Do you think that shorter titles perform better? Does it depend? Ralph your thoughts, and did you have something else?

Ralph Estep  48:33  
Absolutely, I think you've got to keep your title short, because people's attention is quick. If you've got a title that takes up all the characters. I honestly don't think that's effective. I think if you can make it super short, like my title, my daily show today is, here's the or do you know the secret to pay off credit cards super quick, grabs your attention. Oh, I have credit cards. I want to learn how to pay them off. I got to click on this. I had been trimming that down a lot, because there were times when my title was like a book, book long, I took up every character I could. I just don't think that's effective.

Marc Ronick  49:07  
Yeah, I think, to your point, make them scannable for people, right? Like, that's really why the short and sweet I think works well is you want them to be able to see the title and not have to sit there and strain and think about it, right? You just want them to be able to quickly see it and know exactly what the episode is about. I think that is really important. Yeah, thank you. Ralph, any other thoughts, what else is important to you in the title? We know some things that aren't important to you. Some people saying episode numbers, no, thank you. They don't want that in there. What else? What's an example of a title that makes you stop? Or maybe what's you know, Ralph, you shared your title. Let's hear some people, some people's titles.

Ralph Estep  49:49  
Let me throw one more thing in there about titles while we're here. If you say something in your title, make sure your episode addresses that, because one of my big pet peeves is. People that put a title out there, and the episode has nothing to do with the title. So you're making a promise to your audience. When you put a title out there, you better dog gone make sure that that episode speaks to the title you put there, because that's the difference between click bait and real you know, Daniel J Lewis did a show on his show the all this audacity to podcast this week, you're building trust with your audience, and while we're talking about titles, make sure your title is what you're actually talking about. Don't just put a title out there to get somebody's attention and then they'll talk about it. So I didn't mean to sidetrack you there, Marc, but it just came to mind as like that is super important while we're talking about

Marc Ronick  50:37  
titles as well. Yeah, I think that's great. And yeah, I think maybe the best place to wrap up, unless anyone wants to chime in anywhere else. I wanted to share at least some of my takeaways here from this discussion today. I think that your title should just be considered, just like a book cover. It's like a first impression. It's what earns you the clicks. It's what gets people to stop and think about if they're going to press play. But your content is what earns you the listener, right? You get the listener initially they come through your doors, right? But then once they come through the doors, there's got to be stuff that they want to buy in that store, right? So if the title isn't clear and compelling, people never hear your work in the first place, and if your content doesn't deliver, they don't come back. So the goal isn't to pick one over the other. It's really to make sure that they're working together. So I encourage you to think about that when you're doing your titles. And yes, Sid, did you want to respond to that?

Sid Meadows  51:37  
I did. That's a title for a conversation for another room. Marc, how to convert listeners to followers? Yes, Apple shows you how many listeners you have and how many followers followers you have. So how do you convert them? How do you get them to click that plus button so they get notified every time you drop an episode. That's a conversation we should have one day. I love it.

Marc Ronick  51:59  
We will absolutely have that conversation. Thank you, Sid, yes,

Unknown Speaker  52:03  
John, I just want to know what the

Marc Ronick  52:04  
title of this episode will be. Me too. I'm curious. We will see once I run it through my title generator. But yeah, well, right. So to be continued, thank you, John, thank you, Sid, and thanks to all of you for a great conversation today. This was a fun one, and we are back tomorrow, and by the way, tomorrow, it's a double header for yours truly. Tomorrow, yes, we will be back here 7am Eastern, talking all things podcasting news. So stay in the know and come join us to hear all the headlines and our opinions about those headlines. But at 1pm Eastern, we are going live with the Empowered podcasting live stream show that we do every other Wednesday that happens again. 1pm Eastern, you can get all the information about tomorrow's discussion over at podcasting morning chat, Comm, slash, EPC, live. Empowered podcasting conference, live. EPC live. Come check us out there. And Ralph, did you want to add something? No, I was just

Ralph Estep  53:03  
going to remind you to talk about that.

Marc Ronick  53:04  
Yeah. Well, thank you. Appreciate that, Mr. Producer, and we are again back tomorrow, 7am Eastern. So come join us over at podcasting, morning chat, comm slash, join us. And I know I've given you a bazillion links, so check our show notes, and you can find every link you need there. So until tomorrow,

D.R. Fay  53:22  
more than one CTA, what?

Marc Ronick  53:23  
Yes, I know I broke the rule. I broke the rule. Until tomorrow. Make it a great day. Everybody. Take care. Bye.