Hello! My name is Deanna and I help people create great podcasts. Every Sunday I'm sharing one tactical tip to make a killer podcast. So let’s get into it!
Whether you’re just getting ready to launch your show or have already launched it, one key thing you need to do is make sure you’ve defined your audience. Who is you show’s ideal listener?
If I’ve learned anything about podcasts over the last ten years that I’ve been creating them, it’s that I didn’t always do the things I should have done if I wanted to build my audience. Both Welcome to Geekdom and Chat Sematary topped out at around 150 listeners per episode. Sure, some got more, but more often than not, it was in that ballpark.
I know for Welcome to Geekdom, the main problem was that the show encapsulated too many of my interests to ever truly grow. Not everyone who listens to an episode about a Star Wars movie also wants to listen to an episode about a comic book or horror movie and vice versa.
With Chat Sematary I at least had the benefit of knowing exactly who my audience was (people who love Stephen King) while still understanding it wasn’t going to be a huge podcast. I didn’t have the backing of any websites like The Losers’ Club or The Kingcast do. And by backing I mean a built-in platform to share the episodes as I know nothing of the finances of those shows. (Some money always helps, though.)
But, how do you define your audience? First, you want to start with one listener. What does your most ideal listener look like? List off their demographics: age, gender, education, etc. What are their interests? What are their goals? Once you understand this, you can get a broader definition of your audience.
So if I were to do Welcome to Geekdom over again, I’d focus the show on movies with major fandoms. While you can argue that all movies have fandoms, I’m thinking more along the lines of things like Marvel, DC, Star Wars, etc. The huge franchises that people get more angry than anyone rationally should over a movie.
So what would that avatar look like? Probably something like this:
Male, age 25-40, likes to attend ComicCon, spends their time on Reddit threads yelling about franchise movies
Okay, maybe I’m being a bit facetious with that last one, but chances are you got a pretty clear image of exactly who that person is. You can go much deeper on creating an avatar though and come up with something like:
Jeff is a comic book fan who has strong opinions on how the comics have been adapted to the big screen. He lets his opinion be known on r/Marvel and r/DCComics and is at every movie on opening weekend. He frequents his local comic book store and attends the local ComicCon yearly.
That would lead me to the conclusion that my broader audience is people who love to attend cons and go see those specific movies on opening weekend. The biggest fans in these fandoms, to be exact. Like the people in the above photo! So many Jeffs in there!
(For the record, I have absolutely no interest in doing a podcast for that target audience. That actually sounds like my personal nightmare.)
If you’ve already started your show another way you can define your audience (since you already have one) is to send out an audience survey asking several demograhic questions. You’ll never get everyone to reply, but it’ll at least give you a starting point to see if you notice any patterns in your current audience. Then you can figure out how to target similar people.
That’s all for today’s tip. I hope you’re all doing as well as can be during this wild time.
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