Podcasting Q&A

How to make "clickable" episode titles

December 14, 2023 Buzzsprout
Podcasting Q&A
How to make "clickable" episode titles
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, Travis explains how to make your episodes irresistible to both subscribers and casual passers-by.

Need some help with your podcast? Join the Buzzsprout Podcast Community on Facebook to get the help you need from podcasters just like you.

Travis:

Today on five minute Monday we'll talk about how to get listeners to click on your episodes. Welcome to five minute Monday where we bring you the best tips and strategies for building your podcast in five minutes or less. So if you're new here, consider subscribing 11 bizarre places in the u s that you need to know about 25 ways to tell your a kid of the nineties 32 pictures you need to see before you die. Social media has been inundated with these listicle articles doing their best to entice you to click the link and check out their website. I'm looking straight at you, buzzfeed. You are culprit number one. Now, while you may or may not be a big fan of these kinds of articles, there is something that all of us can learn from them and that is simply how to create curiosity in the mind of your listeners. Because when your listeners are scrolling through your feed, or if somebody new stumbles onto your podcast, you want to make your episode titles irresistible where they have to fig, they have to listen to it, they have to figure out what are you talking about, right? You have to create that curiosity. Now, don't worry, as we're getting into this, you won't have to resort to spammy tactics that make you feel, you know, just unethical. We're not gonna dig into Clickbait, but specifically the psychology of helping people get excited and interested in your episodes. Now, one thing that you can do is just to make your title a question, because when you ask someone a question, they're going to want to know the answer, right? They feel this desire to close the loop to, to feel a resolution. It's like when you start a movie but you never finish it. You want to know how it ends. Does the guy get the girl? Do they escape in time before the bomb goes off? Right? So making your episode title or question can elicit that emotion, that feeling of, well, I want to know what the answer is. Recently on my personal podcast, I had an episode called does Christianity need to evolve? And just by looking at that title, people were clicking on it. People that hadn't subscribed to my show and people that are subscribed but don't listen to every episode. And I could tell because that episode got more downloads than the others around it, right? And it's because there was this sense of, I need to know what Travis is going to say and I need to know what the answer is. Right? So just by making your title a question, you can create that kind of curiosity. You can also take a quote unquote controversial stance on something, right? Whenever you see something and it seems, well I'm not really sure I agree with that, or I totally agree. They know exactly where I'm coming from. That can again create an incentive to, to figure out what you're talking about. Right. For instance, another episode that I did was called why the gym is bad for you. And if you just read that at face value, it seems pretty controversial. Most people would think that the gym is good for you, but in certain situations it probably wouldn't be good for you. And so people on both sides are interested to hear what my take is simply because of the title of the episode. Now a third strategy for getting people to click on your episodes is to prominently display the names of well known guests, right? If you interview someone famous, at least famous in the eyes of your listeners, you want to make sure that their name is the first thing you see in the episode title cause you're leveraging their brands, their popularity to get people to listen to the episode, right? Lewis House has a podcast called the school of greatness, which has been around for years, but recently really shot up the charts when he interviewed Kobe Bryant, the former basketball player. Guess what he titled the Episode Koby Bryant Mamba Mentality in the mind of a champion. And that's important because if you're just scrolling through episodes and you see Koby Bryant, you're like, oh wow, I want to listen to that episode. Cause either like Koby Bryant, I like basketball, whatever. Right? And so if you have someone on your podcast that is well known, make sure that you put their name at the beginning of the episode. So people are clued in if they want to listen to that. But whatever you do for title and your episode, make sure that you deliver. Not doing that is a lightning fast way of alienating your audience and turning in to buzzfeed. Need some help with your podcast. The buzz sprout podcast community on Facebook is a great place to find answers and get the help that you need to make your podcast as excellent as possible. So if you're not a member yet, just click on the link in the show notes and asked to join. That's it for today. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you soon.