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Successful podcasters know the importance of making content your audience loves.
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But your podcast has more than one audience - audiences with different needs.
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Are you making content for all of them?
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Hello, and welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra.
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I work with a lot of businesses to help shape their podcasting strategy, sometimes
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just on a purely consulting level, and it's up to them to do the implementation.
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But some continue to become clients of mine, either production
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clients, or they put me on retainer to keep the ideas flowing.
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One of the biggest disconnects I see from a lot of the short-term
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clients or prospects who failed to become a client, has to do with how
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they see the audience, the listeners of the podcast they want to have.
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See, for many of these business-minded clients, a listener is a binary object.
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They either listen or they don't.
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And I suppose that's demonstrably true, but it's not really a helpful heuristic.
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I think it's too simple.
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The problem is that's how they're used to thinking about their customers.
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Someone is a customer, or they're not a customer.
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But this approach, I think, leads to some pretty poor podcast planning, as well as
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implementation, in my experience because in reality, it's helpful to bucket people
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into three groups, not just those two.
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Group one is people who haven't yet listened to your podcast.
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Group two are the people who do listen to your podcast, almost without fail.
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But group three is a new one, and that's made up of people who change state, if
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you will, from listener to non-listener and they go back and forth at that.
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Now, all three of these groups need some attention.
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That means having not just one audience engagement strategy, but three.
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Not just a handful of tactics that are applicable only to one of those
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groups, but a slate of tactics that roll up to those three different
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audience engagement strategies.
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Yeah, that's a lot of work.
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But also, when you break down the needs of those groups you'll see there's
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really not any other way to do that.
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Group one, the never-have-listened-to-you group, they need content from you that
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lets them know that your podcast exists.
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This is not your podcast episodes.
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Remember, these people have never listened to your show.
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They need content from you that makes it quite easy to sample the
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kind of content that you make.
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And easy for them to say, "Yes, please, I would like to have some more."
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For this group, you have to create content - again, not your podcast episodes - and
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support the content with the marketing budget that it deserves so that this
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never-have-listened-to-your-podcast group is not only exposed to your
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content but they can actually get a taste of what you have to offer.
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Let's go to group two, the dedicated listeners.
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These people still need content from you that makes them never,
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ever, ever want to leave.
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They need content from you that makes them want to tell all
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their friends about your podcast.
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And yes, this is the podcast episodes that you make.
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But it's more than that because you need to create content where your
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dedicated listeners live, which may not be just at your podcast.
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You have to create that content and support that content with community
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building and an engagement budget that it deserves, keeping those people
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well-fed and reinforcing the fact that you do, in fact, have the goods and will
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always have the goods that they desire.
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Let's move to group three, those who dip in and out of your podcast.
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They also need content from you, but the content needs to give them
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a compelling reason to listen.
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They're busy.
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They need content from you that fits their purpose, not just fit for your purpose.
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So yes, your podcast episodes, of course, but also your social shares,
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your newsletter, your videos.
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You've got to create that content and then you have to support that content creation
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with some decisions and some research and measurement tools that let you
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know that your efforts to make all that content are actually worth it for them.
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Again, these three groups are very different and you can't do audience
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engagement the same for all three.
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Being ultra-responsive in your show's Discord server is not going
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to help anybody who's not a listener.
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And unless it's packaged in a compelling way, it'll probably miss many of
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those who dip in and out of your show.
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Of course, you will need to be ultra-responsive in that community
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in service to your most loyal fans.
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A properly funded and executed marketing campaign won't have any impact at
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all on your most loyal listeners or even those who listen to you just
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off and on because they're already.
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A properly funded and executed marketing campaign is warranted
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if there are huge segments of the population that you've not yet reached.
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And analyzing the listener experience journey to your show,
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that's not going to impact anybody who doesn't know about your show.
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And it probably doesn't even matter to those who listen to every single episode.
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But, devoting the time to create formats that are more easily consumed by the
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occasional listener can move them towards that loyalty I know you want.
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So all of these audience engagement initiatives, and so many more,
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are important, they're just important for different reasons.
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So focus on not just the audience, focus on the audiences, all of
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them, and the rest tends to follow.
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With that I shall be back on Monday with yet another Podcast Pontifications.
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Cheers!
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Podcast Pontifications is written and narrated by Evo Terra.
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He's on a mission to make podcasting better.
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Links to everything mentioned in today's episode are in the notes
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section of your podcast listening app.
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A written-to-be-read article based on today's episode is available at
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podcastpontifications.com where you'll also find a video version and a corrected
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transcript, both created by Allie Press.
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Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media.
