Building a Compelling Podcast Brand: From Theme to Equipment Essentials

Ever wondered what it takes to create a podcast that not only stands out in a crowded market but also deeply resonates with listeners? We promise you'll uncover the secrets behind successful podcast branding in this episode. We kick things off by sharing personal stories from our own Nerd Brand Podcast journey, illustrating the transformative power of having a well-defined theme. Discover how to pinpoint your podcast's core purpose, accurately target your audience, and overcome the hurdles of maintaining content consistency, even during unpredictable disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic. Our practical tips will help you differentiate your podcast and keep your listeners hooked.

Visual and audio branding can make or break your podcast, and we dive into the details you need to nail it. From creating adaptable episode art for various platforms to leveraging the right color schemes, iconography, and typography, we cover all the elements that enhance your brand perception. Hear our firsthand experiences on transitioning from basic equipment to a more polished setup in a basement studio, and why the right recording environment can often trump expensive gear. Tune in to learn why we opted to skip video content and how we've managed to maintain quality audio without breaking the bank. Join us for an insightful discussion that will equip you with the tools to build a compelling podcast brand.

ABOUT NERDBRAND
NerdBrand is a national branding and advertising agency based in Louisville, KY. From establishing your brand identity to guiding your day-to-day marketing strategies, we bring the "why?" of your business to life.

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ABOUT NERDBRAND

NerdBrand is a national branding and advertising agency based in Louisville, KY.

Learn more about NerdBrand.
Hear more of the NerdBrand Podcast.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

welcome to this episode of the nerd brand podcast. We talk about building a brand for your podcast, because I've been asked this a lot and I've tried to explain it and it's not an easy answer. It's not fast either. Um, so here we go. First thing, theme um, you have to have a show idea. You do you listen to any of those like murder mystery podcasts or anybody that does?

Speaker 2: 0:51

I do actually at, uh, one of my previous jobs. There is one of the ladies that she constantly listened to the true crime drama. She loved it. Apparently one of the times on her way to work she actually saw an accident or whatever and like just stopped and like there there was some type of manslaughter or homicide and there was a dead body. And so she went over and was like looking at the dead body, like getting it. I was like I wouldn't have done that.

Speaker 1: 1:19

Yeah, there's, there's being a fan of things and then there's, just like you know, yeah, no, just don't Like. I remember John was telling me because his wife, she's an EMS person, I think she's a nurse, anyways there was a motorcycle accident across the house and she just takes off out of the porch like a bullet and to the person injured and John's just in the attic looking out the window like wait what?

Speaker 2: 1:52

So there's I don't know. See, I could just see that and being like him being up in the attic like looking out the window, as she's like already ran out. You just see John being like hey, honey, I think, I think there was an accident out there yeah, yeah, it's like delayed uh oh no, never mind, there you go, yeah anyways, theme, you need a good theme.

Speaker 1: 2:16

So, um, the meat, well, it's the y, you know, we talk about the y and branding no theme, it's the why. You know we talk about the why. In branding no theme, it's the me, the me. Okay, jacob's doing dad jokes already, so minus 20 points for him now, sorry for anyone that is early in the morning.

Speaker 2: 2:32

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:33

If you're in your car right now and you're like nope, and you turn the switch over, I please beg you to wait too late. They did no. You have to have a good idea. So what is it you want to talk about? You know, we did this. We started this because of morale. We wanted to keep the morale up and kind of wanted to BS shop talk and thought it would be a good idea to turn the mics on. We don't really have a whole lot of logic built into the podcast and here we are, episode 207, and we're just kind of whatever we're on.

Speaker 2: 3:05

Well, you wanted to build the morales, and there's no out if you're gonna do?

Speaker 1: 3:08

I swear to god, no, we gotta do networking later.

Speaker 2: 3:11

I gotta deal with this crap I'm getting it out now, so I'm more professional, that's all yeah, go ahead, tell yourself that.

Speaker 1: 3:19

Um. So you got to think about how you're going to be different. To attract an audience um, who do you want as listeners? That's going to be different to attract an audience. Who do you want as listeners? That's going to be important.

Speaker 1: 3:26

When we first started and I'll tell you a guilty story of how we messed up. Well, how I messed up because I've been doing this since 2017. When I first started the Nerd Brand Podcast, the vibe of it and the purpose of it really hasn't changed, but the audience wasn't the audience we wanted. It was like a bunch of kids in school and 20 year olds and I'm like that's not really who I would want to listen to, kind of get to know the brand and get to know the voice of us and who we are.

Speaker 1: 3:50

So we started having to dial back and be a bit more serious about subjects in marketing and SEO and just the craft of what we do, as much as nerd culture itself and how it released. Like we had to go more heavy on the nerd on the brand side, less so on the nerd side. And we still do that now. Because of that, because, and and after covid, that was a real big issue. We really had to like figure out what in the world to talk about for two years, because covid shut everything down and comic-con has not.

Speaker 2: 4:21

San diego, comic-con still hadn't recovered, in my opinion yeah, something, any of those big festivals or Comic-Cons are anything.

Speaker 1: 4:26

New York Comic-Con was like right after.

Speaker 2: 4:29

I think most, if not all, of those festivals are still trying to get up and going again. Like a lot of them are kind of like hey, we took like a two-year break.

Speaker 1: 4:38

Four years later, they're just now starting to get their wind back in their lungs and that kind of happens and.

Speaker 1: 4:45

But you know that's, that's a part of. You know, when you're developing the theme you have to think about frequency of recording and what you want to do, because if you have a drop it's really hard to come back unless you've built up enough bass that you can do that. Um, you're going to have to advertise um. So your theme is very your theme is very important because everything else that's going to come out of that is going to really um, when we'll get into the bullet points of what comes out after that. But it's mostly um deliverables that you'll hire somebody to make for you, right Um, or do it yourself, which I don't recommend. But you know you need somebody to kind of be on top of these things. But the theme is the number one thing. Are you going to do a mystery show? Are you going to do information document? What are you going to do?

Speaker 2: 5:28

Yeah, it's basically yeah, like you said earlier. The why why is someone going to be, you know, listening. Why do they want to listen? Why should they listen? Yeah, why do they need to listen?

Speaker 1: 5:49

Why? What do you have that's important enough for them to listen? Yeah, I think there was a. There was a guy I was watching I can't remember his name, he's controversial but I can't remember his name and he was interviewing dennis quaid and he was like look, so you do this format. It's very real-time celebrities. It's like it kind of takes them off the ivory tower so it makes them more humanized, which has also been a detriment in a way, um, to hollywood. By the way, um, because they've always been mysterious, like when you look at jack nicholson as a celebrity versus uh, I don't know justin bieber, yeah, I guess, whatever your modern day celebrity that I'm probably out of touch with jim kardashian yeah that, that's two.

Speaker 1: 6:20

That's the difference. Jack nicholson would have a feature come out, you wouldn't seem, seem for another six months, you know, literally because there was no internet, he wasn't on social media, he wasn't doing it. So anyways, there's that. I don't know how I got off into that tangent, but there is your rabbit trail for those that listen regularly to this show, the, the, but you know, having a theme that you know, the people, the listeners, you know, unless you do Joe Rogan, then you got like three hours and you better have some depth to you is what he said.

Speaker 2: 6:52

Yeah, yeah, because he's well. He also gets good Like guests on the show, good people that can bring into it, and obviously talks controversial topics, which you know.

Speaker 1: 7:06

Yeah, and the theme of that show is free form. It's just like this. It's free form. Yeah, and the theme of that show is free form. It's just like this. It's free form. It's sit down, have a conversation, not necessarily, hey, teach me five ways to like do the thing, even though we're kind of doing that here. But it's like, you know, because we got like one, two, three, four, five, six, seven things for this thing, seven ways to build a brand for your podcast, or seven things you need. But, um, yeah, it's very free form with joe rogan. Um, there's another guy that wears a tie. He's very interview style and that is definitely a different theme where it's very much ask a question, discuss, ask a question discussed. Um, not, you know, because when you some people say, wasn't that joe rogan?

Speaker 2: 7:53

because he had no, it's meandering yeah, because that his is more of a uh yeah, focused interview where it's you kind of know what I'm talking about. He wears a black suit, black tie.

Speaker 1: 8:07

So if I remember his name for god's's sakes.

Speaker 2: 8:09

I'm having all kinds of brain memory potholes right now it smells really bad with these brain farts here yeah thanks, you know, there you go.

Speaker 1: 8:17

There's another one. Anyways, I don't have a sign for that?

Speaker 2: 8:19

No, you don't.

Speaker 1: 8:20

Yeah, that's about all you get. But no, you have your murder mystery ones, you have your um there's a commercial survival ones. There's a lot of podcasts yeah, there's a commercial out right now with this lady. It ends with the lady in the bathtub with earbuds on and uh, but it starts out with all these different characters and things going on and it's a spotify commercial for a podcast, I think, and so yeah.

Speaker 1: 8:54

So you have the example in front of you. When we say themes, you're wondering what do we mean? That's what we mean Again. There's multiple facets to it and nuances, but essentially that's the most important thing on our list. That's why it's at the top, that's why we started with it. The other stuff is the fun stuff. That's show, show art. That's not necessarily, that's not episode art, they're different. Show art is that small icon you see when you look on your phone and the name of the podcast should be on there and you want it to be cool. Have a logo that's fine.

Speaker 2: 9:26

They see the the image that pops up when they type in the name of your podcast. This is the image that pops up when they type in the name of your podcast, this is the image that pops up.

Speaker 1: 9:33

Yeah, and ours is like a great example of simplicity of that. It's just blue, it just says the Nerd Brand podcast, the Nerd Brand podcast, and then it has our glasses faded. They're in there, and so it's got to be recognizable very quickly. You want to have something that is clear because it is on a tiny little app.

Speaker 2: 9:57

Well, yeah, you got to thank everyone. They're typing in the search and then it's popping up right there, so you want to be something that they type three letters in. They're already seeing your image of your logo because most search engines and speaking, well, speaking that since you just brought up search engines, do you?

Speaker 1: 10:12

it's I. There's a great podcast episode out there, um, for our one of our partners, jason bernard, where he interviews two guys that are in seo and the question is, um, basically, where do people search for podcasts? Do they search on google, or do they search on like apple or spotify? You know, where is the SEO direction needed and best, and it's a great debate. We might actually have that and see if we can get a guest on about that, and I think I know exactly who to ask because, yeah, a lot of people think like, well, I'm going to go to Google and look up podcasts. No, no, I don't. I don't look up podcasts to listen to on Google.

Speaker 2: 10:51

Yeah, I'd go to Spotify. Yeah, no, I don't look up podcasts to listen to on Google.

Speaker 1: 10:53

Yeah, I'd go to Spotify. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:55

I'm not an Apple guy, so yeah, well, we know that.

Speaker 1: 10:58

We see the phone and we're like stop using that.

Speaker 2: 11:01

What do you mean? Stop.

Speaker 1: 11:02

This is amazing yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:03

It's a fold. By the way, for everyone who hasn't seen my phone.

Speaker 1: 11:07

Jacob, is that one guy in our group that has to use Android? We're just like, all right, whatever. Anyways, you want to take the next one.

Speaker 2: 11:15

So it's going to be episode art. Your art must be adaptable for social media and podcast feeds and also pod adaptability to your strategy, which you kind of just talking about something like that a little bit earlier.

Speaker 1: 11:27

Well, it's again. Use our podcast as an example. We have a four by three ratio, which is a square, and that goes out on weirdly. Linkedin loves that ratio Four by three, yeah and it makes a great post on social media but if you use it on Facebook you get the bars on each side like the old TV show. They've gotten better about it. But the ratio you want is like 16 by 9. I don't give pixel sizes because honestly it's a ratio thing and that's just you know. It should just be fine with that. But, um, youtube uses 16 by 9 for thumbnail. So when I say adaptability, it's different sizes of that medium for different platforms right.

Speaker 2: 12:10

But also, though, with each episode, though, everything looks exactly the same, except for the things that were different about that next episode yeah, ours is pretty consistent with colors. All the colors are the same. It's just like the word usage, like what that episode's about and or if there's a special guest or topic or something that shows well, we always have this style where we put the orange bar on there and there's like a subtitle leaving out.

Speaker 1: 12:38

Our show does have subtitles, for, like, this is the title of the show and that's the main font, you see, but then below it mitch will pull out a nugget and put a subtitle in there. That sound happens too and he presses the button on. In design he'll like press a button and it goes.

Speaker 2: 12:54

It's the button I was gonna say I was like, well, they should be able to get subtitles from a recording anyways yeah, well, no, he puts it because he's he's making a graphic, so you know you gotta have a button.

Speaker 1: 13:07

Um, right now everybody's like could you stop doing that in my ear okay, it's uh this kind of button yeah, and we are going to talk about sounds. Um, I don't have that in a little. Well, I do have audio elements in there, but anyways, colors are next. Um, so when you think about the audience you want to try to capture, you gotta think about colors. So two or three episodes back on this show, you and I talked about color theory. That's where that plays in.

Speaker 2: 13:35

Yep, exactly, Because I mean with ours we had the blue, black, white and then a little bit of our orange in there, which you know. They're all on our brand, it's our brand guide, All those are. So it's already on point on brand. So if you're a company, you're going to want to keep that in mind. You don't want to utilize that if you're using it, like how we use podcasts, people always ask.

Speaker 1: 13:57

They're like what's the name of the podcast? And I'm like the nerd brand podcast because of the story, is that it came first in the agency, but it's always funny like because it was the egg. Yeah, and I know everybody's like well, you gotta about naming. How do you come up with a name? Like you know you can't do any of that until you get through this list. Trust us, yeah, you got to think about these things and think them through before you get to that. You can just lore them ipsum, as we say, whatever the name is for now. But, yeah, no colors, is that's important?

Speaker 2: 14:33

I mean, you want calm. Do you want punchy? Do you want, like it's going to play into the tone of the show, like, for example, joe Rogan's? His episode Colors and icons are very bright, as even his.

Speaker 1: 14:41

He's a stand up comedian.

Speaker 2: 14:42

So everything is like, he's almost like all day, all night.

Speaker 1: 14:46

Joe Rogan podcast, all day yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:48

Yeah, everything's like all caps, bold letters. It's almost like he's the uh pig in the warner brothers sticking his head out, being like that, that's like he's exploding through at you, right, right, the image. So that's, you know he's aggressive. Yeah, that's all on point. On one brand, you know it's a great, great. He has a lot of yellows and reds which are, if you remember our talk, kind of really hit on those of like being loud and alert yeah.

Speaker 1: 15:14

So you're, you know it's like when we start the show with the music that we start with you know, I mean yeah, so when we bring that up, it's like okay, get ready, something's happening and you know it's. It's important to kind of pick that again. We'll get to audio in a minute, but iconography you want to take that one?

Speaker 2: 15:32

Oh, iconography must be legible, which means I'm not going to be writing it Again. Think about where it's going. Small and large applications need to be easily read. Perhaps avoid complex scripts and stick to sans serifs.

Speaker 1: 15:51

Sans serifs, sans sans serifs. So iconography is it's an icon and, uh, the sans serifs is reference to the, the fonts you may choose. So it's also your typography. Um, so the fonts you may want to use to make it more readable when you see it. Um, and the iconography is, you know, you'll see, like a logo. Basically, m Mitch calls it a bug, you know, which is a really old term, by the way, but at the end of the day, it can become recognizable. It's kind of like what you just said about Joe Rogan it's like his face and it's coming out of this thing and it's the same thing. It's like the Wendy's logo. It's Wendy and she's coming out of the thing and it's just know, you got the golden arches, yeah, yeah. So what is the iconography that fits the show? That's on brand with it. If that's the direction you go in, but not required, you do that because we don't really have an icon associated with our podcast. Just me, it's just yeah, yeah, it's just you, jacob. Jacob's the icon anyways.

Speaker 1: 16:48

Audio elements I think this is the part everybody wants. Is that? What sounds and music and elements do you want to use? So you got to be careful here, because it really depends on the audience you're trying to pick. So you can listen to a lot of shows and some use calming music because that's what they're for. You're going to do a yoga, yeah, so that sound effect there is like just kind of an opener, get attention.

Speaker 1: 17:10

The show is starting, but some people use music throughout the show and that can be a distraction if you don't really know how to edit well with your audio. We don't use music through the show as a filler or as a background. It's a good tactic to use on what the heck is it called? Asmr type, maybe stuff, I don't know. Anyway, the thing about it is it's got the audio. You got to think about your audio how it's going to fit with the show. Anyway, the thing about it is it's got the audio. You got to think about your audio how it's going to fit with the show, for the tone of it. Um, people are going to remember it and if it's boring, well, they're going to stop listening yeah, if it's, if it's annoying or boring.

Speaker 2: 17:48

No, yeah or otherwise, it can be catchy and then that way it catches on.

Speaker 1: 17:53

I mean it's yeah, I mean, when you think of net, you hear the audio.

Speaker 2: 17:57

Yeah, you hear that. Or the McDonald's.

Speaker 1: 18:01

Well, thx was the big sound engineering place and whenever a movie would show or start in a theater, that would play. And it's actually a, an audio. That is a part of the logo, part of the brand, but it also did a sound check with the speakers in the room.

Speaker 2: 18:18

Yeah, there's a double double, yeah, I always like logos.

Speaker 1: 18:21

By the way, fun fact, google's logo is great to. Um, yeah, calibrate a printer. Yep, that's what it's for I mean stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 18:30

I'm like that's genius, that's like having a secret inside of a secret yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:36

So it's always like you can always do those audio kinds of things. We come up with an idea like that and it's got a purpose for it. It's a really good story to podcast actually about as one of your first episodes. How many episodes do you do at start? How many do you think?

Speaker 2: 18:49

How many episodes do to start yeah, to start a show.

Speaker 1: 18:52

To start a show, you probably want at least 12 for like a season, 10 to 12 I would imagine you could, but that'd be a lot, I would say, to not kill yourself if you're going to do 20 minutes. Uh three, just have three ready to go oh, three right, all right.

Speaker 2: 19:08

Yeah, I was gonna say for like a season or something, yeah, and that well, that's.

Speaker 1: 19:11

The other thing is people have asked me before, like, do you do seasons? No, I don't do seasons. I was going to do seasons, but then I'm like I ain't getting a check from a big studio. No one cares, so we just do numbers. We'd follow the Joe Rogan thing where it's just a number, it's not a season, it's just a number, and the number really allows us in our internal database and also for bragging rights.

Speaker 1: 19:31

At some point when you hit triple digits, like we have, that you can say, like you've been doing this for a bit, especially if you have a weekly show, um, and you want to do bi-weekly, we thought about backing that off to bi-weekly. I don't think it's going to work for us. It's always been weekly. Uh, we only spent about 20, 30 minutes on something and then we're out. There's another sound effect I tried to make. That didn't go. Well, um, we'll figure out. Yeah, people laughing at that one. There we go, that'll work, that's fine. I'll probably have to cut that out anyways, because who knows how the sound will come across. Uh, that's what happens when I tell a joke.

Speaker 1: 20:07

So it's actually usually when I do yeah, but the audio elements I mean those are important the the equipment and how that plays into equipment. I've had people ask me about that. Don't overthink it. You can get really simple equipment. You just need a good place to record. That's more important is the environment.

Speaker 2: 20:25

Correct. Yeah, I would agree with that. I would say, just having a nice place and a steady, consistent place that you can do. Yeah, good chairs, you want a table?

Speaker 1: 20:34

with good chairs, want a good table with good chairs, right, and because you're having a conversation and you want your guests to be comfortable, so you have to. Don't think about the mechanics of like, what kind of mic? No, a good chair, it's comfortable.

Speaker 1: 20:50

Yeah, a good chair would be better, more beneficial for you than your top of the line, mike yeah, because I mean, we started with um, just the iphone this is during covid and there was an app that I think I bought out or got yeah, I got bought by spotify actually, so I don't think it's around anymore, but we were using that. So I would call mitch and john up and then we would join a conference call and we would record it that way. So our first I want to say maybe 50 episodes were done that way, oh man. And then we ended up going to the studio, I think for the next, all the way up to 140, episode 140. And then the studio went out of business so we had to leave. That was a sad day. It wasn't our studio, it was just a place we were paying to record in. They went out of business, so we didn't. It was a sad day to see that, and because we've been vagabonds ever since, now we're in my basement, so that's now, that's fun.

Speaker 1: 21:49

But you know, that's actually the best places to go.

Speaker 2: 21:57

Sometimes it's the place you you don't expect to be in, and that's where we end up getting the sound quality that we get as best we get without making a huge investment, and it makes it consistent so we don't have to feel like, oh, we're going to hear, no, we're here. No, they're.

Speaker 1: 22:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just working out with guests, though it's the thing. It's like oh, do we do this? Because the guests that down here and sitting like she's pretty, you know, like she's she was an athlete, she's, you know, done all kinds of stuff. If she's listening, she probably already knows who she is. And, yeah, I'm going to ask you to be on the show. You're going to find out. But that's the thing about the audio is don't get hung up on that. We invested several thousand in equipment. That is pretty, pretty basic that everybody gets. You'll find it at. You know other major places that do podcasting now and brag about it, but you know you're gonna spend a couple thousand dollars to do that.

Speaker 2: 22:42

Yeah I mean you're gonna want at least a somewhat simple basic soundboard like you need a budget.

Speaker 1: 22:47

That's where you get into the budget. So when you start to build out all this stuff, you really need to think about like all right, I need to figure out a budget over the years. All right, well, equipment, I don equipment. I don't have the money for that, so I need to invest the rest of that into the other stuff we talked about on the list, and that would be better. And then the final thing on the list that I'm going to bring up and then we'll cut out of here is the video. Like video. We don't do video anymore, and the reason we don't do video anymore is a pain in the butt. That's it. Yeah, I just don't have. I personally don't have time to edit at all for those listening.

Speaker 2: 23:24

You're like yeah, we know, jason, I think we can hear it, see, and I got a face made for radio, so it's weird yeah, yeah, that's what happens all the damn time.

Speaker 1: 23:30

Everywhere we go, jacob's like oh it's god, it's jacob, put a plastic bag on it, you know no, that's our paper bag.

Speaker 1: 23:37

Screams and runs out, yeah, yeah dear god, what was that thing from princess fried? Um, but no, it's just. It's such a you want to have more than one camera so you can do cutting and the the camera switching, rather, and there's a lot of options out there, but they all cost money. And you want to cutting, the camera switching, rather, and there's a lot of options out there, but they all cost money. And you want to have a good camera and you've got to figure out lighting, you've got to figure out your audio.

Speaker 2: 24:03

And that's when you need a better place like the visuals.

Speaker 1: 24:07

You want something that's on a grid. The primary rule, like where we are, is on a grid. We could do it. We'd have to resituate where the table is in the room, but at the end of the day, we could easily find a place for a couple of lighting rigs and then the wires for the camera and how that would work out for the audio and everything. That would be the only thing to work. We'd have to literally buy a new table with holes in it so that we can run it through the floor, because that's the other thing I think about.

Speaker 1: 24:36

You want to have a clean table when you do video. Our table right now is not clean. There's a laptop on it, there's two big mics on it, there's Jacob's phone, there's the board, there's a bunch of wires and a mouse pad and my iPhone and at the end of the day, that's about all the room that's left. So when you do video, you want a nice table. You want it clean, because if you have a guest, you want their brand visible on the camera in the shot. Like I said, that's it for this episode. We're happy if you're out there and you're listening and you want to leave a suggestion or anything on our social media channels. No, not that, don't put people to sleep. That's mine now, but you can do that. You can check us out at nerdbrandagencycom slash podcast and you can check us out also, if you prefer your apps Spotify, itunes or whatever it's called now, I don't care, it's always going to be iTunes in my heart.

Speaker 1: 25:25

We'll see you all next week Later.