Resonating with your Podcast Audience
Whether you have a podcast or are thinking of starting one, your success will depend on the show's ability to resonate with your audience. One way to ensure that listeners love your show is to think clearly about what they have in common.
Is Your Audience Special?
One of the most gratifying aspects of our work at Voxtopica is making great podcasts for highly niche audiences. We learn about interesting industries, jobs, scientific research, and public policies daily. Our clients' knowledge of the issues and topics that matter within their respective fields makes for high-value, informative content for their most important audiences.
Niche podcasters can sometimes face a specific challenge: they underestimate the value of other common properties their listeners share. The audience's preferences and expectations around the content may be unique to the topics and issues presented, but listeners’ engagement with the medium is not unique.
While there are many important reasons why someone would listen to your podcast, there are two factors that are common to all your regular, consistent (i.e., most valuable) listeners:
Your listeners all care about the topics and issues your podcast addresses.
Your listeners all enjoy listening to podcasts.
If you ensure that your podcasting strategy addresses these two factors at all times, you’ll have what it takes to acquire a meaningful audience for every episode.
Make Content That Stands Out
Every podcaster wants to create great content, but experienced showrunners know it’s easier said than done. Keeping an audience engaged for 20 to 30 minutes is hard work.
Think about this: the writers of a half-hour network TV sitcom tell a whole story with three complete acts in about 22 minutes (when you account for commercials). A local nightly news show covers multiple stories, including sports and weather, in about the same amount of time. These programs keep audiences engaged by keeping things moving and leaving viewers little time to become distracted or bored.
Fortunately, podcast listeners are more familiar with long-form content, and you can keep them engaged without changing topics every three minutes. Nevertheless, your podcast should offer listeners three key benefits in every episode.
Your listeners should find your podcast valuable.
Your listeners should feel that they benefit from your show. Your job is to ensure that the content provides value to your listeners by educating, informing, or entertaining them (or all three). Don’t make the mistake of focusing on what you want them to know; ask yourself what they want to know.
Your listeners should find your podcast engaging.
Your listeners should stay focused on your show while listening and remember it when they're not. Your job is to ensure that the content has a clear structure the listener can follow. (We recommend structuring episodes as three-act plays, with pre-determined beginnings, middles, and ends.) Avoid the trap of thinking a free-flowing conversation is authentic; it’ll just be hard to follow.
Your listeners should find your podcast unique.
Your listeners should feel that your content isn’t available anywhere else. Your job is to ensure the content is fresh and original. If your show covers information that is available elsewhere, you should bring it together in a new way or present different perspectives. While it might be more straightforward to put out a podcast that is just an audio version of your organization’s existing content, ensuring your podcast offers your listeners something new is a great way to ensure they keep coming back for more.
If you focus on making a podcast that listeners find valuable, engaging, and unique, you’ll be most of the way to podcasting success.
Respect The Medium
This goes without saying, but you have a better chance of growing your podcast audience by focusing on the 55% of Americans who’ve listened to a podcast in the last month than trying to get the 26% who’ve never listened to a podcast.
In other words, remember that your listeners are podcast listeners. They have an established relationship with podcasts that transcends your show and applies to all the other shows they’ve ever heard. If your show doesn’t meet their expectations, they’ll find it hard to keep listening and move on to another podcast.
Your listeners expect consistency.
One of the questions we get most often is, “How long should our podcast episodes be?” The unsatisfying answer is, “It depends.” Episode length, release cadence, and other similar variables of your podcast depend on your listeners' specific attributes and capabilities. Your job is to determine what will work for your audience and then stick to it. Avoid releasing episodes of many lengths or on random days and times because you think the content warrants it. You’ll just annoy potential listeners.
Your listeners expect you to know them.
I’ve often said that the currency of podcasting is time. Podcast listeners typically have “listening time,” during which podcasts are their preferred media, such as during a commute or while walking their dog. When it’s listening time, they choose which of their favorite podcasts they’ll spend it with.
Your job is to ensure the format and structure of your show matches the audience’s attention span, listening setting, and available time. In other words, you should understand what “listening time” means to them. An audience of busy professionals might prefer shorter, more focused episodes, while younger listeners with more free time might enjoy longer, more entertaining episodes.
Don’t make the mistake of believing that your audience is somehow different from most other podcast listeners. Assumptions like that will only limit your audience's growth.
Making content your audience loves while meeting their expectations is a surefire approach to producing a great podcast.
Susanna Cassisa assisted with writing and editing this article.