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To name a podcast, brainstorm five to ten names yourself, ask an AI tool for 20 more using your audience and vibe, then search Spotify and Apple Podcasts to see if the title is taken. If it is, add a subtitle or your name. Use Canva for logo ideas, then hand them to a designer.
To name a podcast, combine your own brainstorm with AI suggestions, then check Spotify and Apple Podcasts to see whether the title is already taken. You will probably stick with this name for a long time, so it is worth doing in a few clear steps. Here is the process I walk people through.
How do you brainstorm a podcast name?
Start with your own brain. Write down five or ten possible names. Do not edit yourself yet. If you have already worked out your audience, mission and vibe, you have the raw material: who it is for, what it does, how it feels.
Then take it a step further and bring in a second brain. Open ChatGPT, or your AI tool of choice, because there are plenty of them. Tell it you are putting together a podcast, and share the vibe and the other decisions you have made. Say you are brainstorming. I usually ask for 20 names and let it list them out.
It is interesting to see how the AI brain comes up with different ideas from your human brain. And then you keep the conversation going:
- Ask for something more playful, more thoughtful or more professional.
- Tell it which name is your first choice and why.
- Say, I like this one a little more. What if we combine these two?
Keep asking until you have names that make you smile. That back and forth is where the good ones usually show up.
How do you check whether a podcast name is taken?
This is the step that can be a little frustrating, and it is worth doing. Go to Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Those are the two big platforms, and if you are not familiar with them, you should get familiar with them. Both are apps you can download on your phone. If Apple Podcasts is not available on your phone, use Spotify.
Type your name into the search. If that were the title of your podcast, does someone else already have it? Spoiler alert: a lot of these titles are taken. Ideally you do not come up with a name that 85 other people are using.
What if the name you love is already taken?
There is a workaround. Come up with a good sub-headline for the show. The title, a colon, and then the rest of the headline. Or the name followed by "with" and your own name. That makes the title unique enough that you avoid confusion and legal issues, but you can still get your podcast out there.
Ideally the name has never been chosen, but that gets harder as time goes on. A strong subtitle or your own name attached to a good title usually solves it.
Work back and forth between the AI list, your own list and the search results. On your checklist, write down your three top choices, and then make a final selection. If you book a session with me, show up with those ideas already figured out, and we can decide together whether it is a great idea or whether we should rethink and come up with something else.
How do you get a podcast logo started?
Visual branding comes next. Canva is a tool that helps people design things easily, and it has some interesting features for getting ideas going. I tried it by typing in "podcast logo design" and describing a doctor who likes running marathons, just to add a little something to the mix.
What came back was a starting place. A running figure on top of what could be a sun or a sunset. A logo made for doctors. A sneaker. A silhouette that looked a little like me. Some squiggly lines that suggested a heartbeat, which was kind of interesting. None of it was finished, and it was not supposed to be. It gets the ideas going.
Can AI design your podcast logo?
For ideas, yes. For finished artwork, not yet. AI has trouble with graphics and wording, and that is fine, because I would hand the concept to a graphics person anyway. A designer can pick the right fonts, give you variations and bring a few different ideas to life.
The workflow I recommend is simple:
- Use the tool to generate ideas and keep a back and forth going about what you like.
- Look through the logo sections for more concepts, even if you do not yet know which fonts you like. Using a tool for idea creation can get you almost all the way there.
- Turn your favorites over to a graphic designer to refine and produce.
How do you keep branding from stalling your launch?
This is the important part. The goal is to keep moving forward and not get stuck in any one of these steps, because months and months can go by. Name, logo and look are all important, and none of them is worth more than the episodes you could be recording.
When you are ready for the next stage, the podcast host gear checklist covers what to buy, and the podcast hosting checklist covers how to run your first interviews. If you want your show to reach more people once it is live, how to grow a podcast is the natural next read.