Essential branding tips for podcasters: creating a memorable identity
Set your show apart with thoughtful visuals, voice, and tone.
Last updated: July 11, 2025
Author: Sam Cook, Multimodal content creator
When starting up a podcast, there are some obvious things you’ll need to figure out: where to record, how to edit, and what gear you need. But one of the more important – and often overlooked – elements is your branding.
Developing a distinct and memorable brand sets your podcast apart from the thousands of others within its genre. This may sound daunting, but once you design the key components of your brand, all you need to do is be consistent across episodes, platforms, and community engagement.
Branding is essential for every podcast, yet it’s not something you should hop right into without planning. You should establish a compelling and recognizable voice, visual style, logo, and cover art that you can easily replicate across every episode.
Here’s how to get started.
Define your podcast’s unique voice and tone
A unique voice and tone are the largest components of your brand; how else could there be so many different true crime podcasts? Whenever a new or returning listener tunes into an episode, your style will be woven in throughout that episode. If they like what they hear, they’ll keep coming back. However, you must maintain that voice and tone to encourage them to become loyal listeners.
There are two important questions that you need to answer at this step:
- What voice and tone make the most sense for your niche?
- How can you create these in a way that works for your niche, yet is still unique?
Listen to other podcasts to understand what works in your niche
You can answer the first question by doing a bit of research; start by listening to different podcasts within your desired niche. Explore active and highly successful podcasts as well as newer or less streamed ones. You may be able to note differences across that range of success. In effect, you are looking for what to do and what not to do.
During this process, you should be looking for the following:
- Type of podcast episode (interview, storytelling, educational)
- Stylistic choices
- Vocabulary usage
- Tone of voice
- Use of humor
- Strategic pauses
- Volume fluctuations
- Mood
Any aspect of what you hear in the podcast will be part of that podcast’s voice. Create a spreadsheet to compare these. There are other elements you may want to consider as well. Try to listen to episodes from at least 10 different podcasts to get a good sample of various styles.
Begin creating your unique voice
Begin crafting your voice and style after you feel confident you’ve gathered enough information from your research. Use the notes you’ve taken to help you write your scripts and get into the right mental headspace while you record your episodes.
Importantly, focus on authenticity across every type of podcast episode. Although you are being a bit strategic in your delivery, you must internalize these elements before publishing your episodes. Listeners can quickly identify when a podcast is overly formulaic.
You may need extra time to hone your voice and style before publishing your first episode. Additionally, you should practice varying your tone and style for each type of episode. Interviews often have a different style from storytelling or educational content. Consider recording your first few episodes multiple times until you can deliver the content naturally.
Create eye-catching visuals: Logo & cover art
Because podcasting is audio-based, many new podcasters overlook the need for attractive visual designs. However, logos and cover art are essential window dressing to help you market your podcast and draw in new listeners.
When you publish your podcasts to a hosting service, the RSS data it sends to various platforms will include images — if you’ve created them. Those images will then be displayed within the platform, showing your podcast’s logo and cover art to potential listeners looking through the list of channels and episodes.
Cover and logo art significantly impacts podcast performance
The saying “don’t judge a book by its cover” is a nice thought, but it doesn’t reflect the way humans actually behave. Even small tweaks to a design can impact engagement. As explained in a Podcast Marketing Academy blog post, the Growth Mindset Psychology podcast host saw his impressions drop 60% and plays drop 50% after he made changes to the cover art that his listeners didn’t like.
If you’re a novice graphic designer, be sure to check out Adobe Express, which is included in the Adobe Podcast Premium subscription.
Adobe Express is a free, web-and mobile app that lets you create graphics, videos, web pages, and more. It's aimed at mainstream users, not professional graphic designers. You can use it from any device to access tons of templates. With Adobe Express, you can work on your designs from anywhere with a powerful set of built-in tools.
Tips on podcast logo and cover art design
Your cover art and logo designs should be clear, engaging, and reflect the topic of your podcast. Three primary design elements play a large part in the success of your design:
- Color scheme: Consider using colors that resonate well with your audience and fit the topic of your podcast. Additionally, study color psychology and tweak your designs based on existing research.
- Typography: The font you use in your logo and cover art can impact the number of plays you receive. The wrong font could drive away potential listeners. Neutral font styles are best, but this is also an area to test.
- Imagery: Imagery impacts viewership, as the Growth Mindset Psychology podcast learned when it changed the imagery in its cover art. Explore what podcasts in your niche are doing. Is the imagery more commonly drawn art or dramatic headshots of the hosts? In the beginning, you may want to go with what most podcasts in your niche are doing.
Before sharing your cover art designs, verify that you have at least one version that works across platforms. The image file’s size, type, aspect ratio, and originality will all influence whether it displays correctly on the hosting platforms. For example, Apple requires all podcast logos to be original designs, so you will want to avoid using stock photos.
Check each platform's requirements to ensure your designs meet those requirements.
Maintain consistency across platforms
Consistency is what ensures you not only grow your podcast but also develop it into a brand. As you expand your podcast, focus on uniformity across all of the following parts of your podcast:
- Logo
- Cover art
- Episode titles
- Descriptions (podcast and episodes)
- Hashtags
- Episode intros and outros
Your visual and auditory branding are easy to maintain across platforms once you’ve created them. As long as your designs meet each hosting platform’s requirements, every new episode will be shared via RSS with your logos and branding. You can also reuse pre-recorded parts of intros and outros, switching out content where needed for new episodes.
Also, ensure you’re maintaining a consistent presence across social media channels. While you may want to use logo variations, try to avoid making dramatic changes to the design. The objective is to create a visual brand that fosters positive emotional connections and becomes instantly recognizable and familiar to your audience.
Engage with your audience for a loyal community
As you grow your audience, take time to engage with them on various social media channels, forums, and in podcast reviews. Branding is about more than the logos and cover art that visually define your podcast. How you communicate is also a key part of personal brand recognition.
There are several ways you can create a loyal community around you:
- Create social media accounts and pages for your podcast to communicate with listeners.
- Ask listeners to leave your podcast reviews.
- Send surveys or polls to your podcast listeners to help gauge their feelings about your podcast and topics they’d like to hear you cover.
- Set up RSS feeds for news, social media, or forum mentions of your podcast and then hop into the comments to engage.
Actively engaging in different channels will help you build a presence. Listeners also enjoy feeling some closeness and familiarity with the person behind the podcast. Engaging with listeners helps humanize you in a positive way and keeps your podcast top-of-mind for listeners.
You may even want to host a live Q&A session on one or more of the social media channels you use to communicate with your audience. This will give you a chance to gain good feedback—both positive and negative—so be prepared to handle critiques gracefully. Approach user interaction with the mindset that feedback equals growth.
Some points of feedback will be more useful than others. However, listeners will appreciate when it’s clear you’re listening to them and responding in proactive ways to improve the quality and interest of your podcast.
Utilize cross-promotion & collaboration
The idiom “a rising tide lifts all boats” may seem dated, but it’s true within the creator space. When other podcast hosts recommend your podcast, you will see significantly faster subscriber and listener growth. That type of relationship is a two-way street. When you cross-promote podcasts, everyone wins.
That even applies to podcasts within the same niche. Although looking at the landscape from a competitive standpoint is tempting, many people will consume multiple podcasts within the same genre every week. This means it’s exceptionally beneficial for you to find a podcast within the same genre as yours and not only cross-promote but also collaborate in various ways, such as co-hosting or guest-hosting episodes.
Other good strategies to get your podcast and your brand out there include:
- Leverage social media to amplify your and other podcasts’ content
- Give shout-outs to podcasts you like on social media (tag their hosts!)
- Share resources with other podcasters
Switch your mindset toward seeing the podcasting space as collaborative instead of competitive. Doing so will open you to significantly creative and mutually beneficial ways to increase your reach.
Conclusion
Podcasting is an incredibly dynamic form of media and entertainment. Although it’s a medium focused on what people hear, podcasters must also account for what they see. Potential and current listeners will see your branding before ever listening to your podcast. Generate and maintain a dedicated following by focusing on your branding materials (logo, cover art) and your personal brand (engagement style, voice, and tone).
Additionally, look to the existing network of creators to help grow your subscriber count. Cross-promote others’ content, collaborate, guest-host, and co-host in ways that benefit everyone. The more effort you put into creating a positive and dynamic image for yourself, the easier it will be to attract audiences and collaborators.
About the author: Sam Cook is a former high school English and journalism teacher who specialized in teaching writing with a multimodal approach using audio and visual media. After leaving the classroom to take up writing and marketing, he found himself leading several initiatives at various companies, including scripting and recording YouTube videos. He loves any podcast from Wondry, especially Business Wars and American Innovations.