How to rebrand your podcast

Are you thinking of changing the name of your podcast and taking it in a different direction? In this episode, Travis helps you decide if rebranding is right for you and how to do it without losing your subscribers.

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Transcript

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Travis 0:00

Today on five minute Monday, I'll teach you how to rebrand your podcast without losing subscribers. Welcome to five minute Monday. We're bringing the best tips and strategies for building your podcast in five minutes or less. So if you're new here, consider subscribing. Are you thinking about changing the name of your podcast? Perhaps you've a better idea of what you want to talk about then when you first started or you just want to try something different or new. Now, the main reason that you would rebrand your podcast instead of starting a new podcast is simple. You get to keep your audience. That is if you do it well, but before you go through the effort of changing the name, URLs, artwork, files, interest segments, and everything else that goes into your podcast, you want to consider if free branding is the best way to achieve the change that you want. If you just want to try new things or experiment with different types of episodes, there are ways to do that within the framework of your podcast as it exists right now, right? If you just want to add an interview episode to your podcast every week, add an interview episode. If you want to test out a creative idea that you had at 4:00 AM one morning, just do it. Your audience will not jump ship because you are trying new ways of serving them. Every podcast evolves. You know, if you listen to the most recent episode of your favorite podcast, chances are it is significantly different than their very first episode. It's only natural to grow and your podcast will change over time, so you can make those shifts without having to hit a hard reset. But here are some helpful questions to consider if you're thinking about rebranding your podcast. Question number one, does this new direction serve a different audience than than what I already have? If the answer is yes, then you would be better off starting a brand new podcast, right? The people that are listening to your star wars podcast might not be interested in hearing you talk about home gardening. For instance. Question number two, will rebranding. Get me closer to my podcast goals. You know, think about when you first started your podcast, what were you hoping to achieve? If you believe that changing the name of your podcast will help get you there faster than it might be a good thing to do. If not, maybe just stick with what you have. Is Your podcast part of a larger brand? You know, this is one that comes up frequently because often you start your podcast as a passion project, but then over time you start to build out other pieces and now it's one piece in a larger pie. Maybe now you have an online business associated with it. Are you selling online courses and you would like your podcast to compliment those other projects and if that's the direction you're going, then maintaining consistency between your projects might be a good thing to do. So after you consider those questions and figure out, yes, I want to rebrand, that's the direction I want to take my podcast. Here are some to do some tips to make sure that you don't lose your audience. Number one, have a really good reason. Why are you rebranding your podcast? Is it to better serve your audience? Is it to expand the scope of what you can discuss? Have a clearly defined reason why you're rebranding your podcast. Tip number two is to learn from your initial launch. What are the things that you wish you had done differently the first time around? Do you wish you had invested a little bit more in getting professionally designed podcast at work ? Did you spend too much on your royalty free theme song? Did you start a Facebook group only to watch it shrivel up and die because you couldn't stay active in it? Right when you are rebranding your podcast, it gives you an opportunity to to do the things well that you wish you had done when you first got started. Tip number three, you want to prepare your audience right? As long as your goal is to continue to serve the same people, take the time to talk to them about the upcoming change. Make a special episode where you explain why you're changing the name, how it will benefit your listeners and when the change will take place. You don't want your listeners to be looking for my awesome podcast and be unable to find it because you renamed it to podcasting tips with So-and-so. And then finally, don't look back. Rebranding your podcast is a big deal, so make sure it's really what you want to do. But once you are sure, pull the trigger and don't look back. The only thing more jarring to your listeners, the rebranding your podcast is re rebranding it because you decided later on it was a bad idea.

Speaker 2 4:38

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Travis 4:39

need some help with your podcast, the bus route podcast community on Facebook is a great place to find answers and get the help 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.