46. Who Are You Talking To? Why Identifying Your Ideal Listener is Key for Podcasting Success

Is your message getting lost because you're trying to speak to everyone? In this episode, I dive into why your podcast should cater to just one ideal listener. I share my own mistakes and recent "aha" moments.  Plus, I'll reveal a small but exciting pivot I'm making with this show and what it means for you. 

Mentioned in this episode:
The Audience is Listening: A Little Guide to Building a Big Podcast by Tom Webster

Thinking about starting a podcast? Grab my free Podcast Roadmap: 10 Simple Steps to Launch Your Own Podcast (No Fancy Tech Required!) at www.ThePodcastTeacher.com/roadmap

This episode was produced by me, The Podcast Teacher! Contact me at Hello@ThePodcastTeacher.com.

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Transcript

Hey. Hey. And welcome back. Today, we're talking about who you are talking to on your podcast. Your podcast audience is so important. Without an audience, we podcasters are just creating content to hear ourselves talk. And I don't know about you, but I don't really like to hear myself talk. I want to share information and insights with other people, and that's why I tolerate hearing myself talk.

I've said before that everything about your podcast needs to come back to your listener. In my podcasting 101 workshops, the very first thing we tackle on day 1 is your audience because our audience drives every single podcasting decision that we make. I did an entire episode about how your show is not about you and how so many podcasters are accidentally sabotaging their shows because they're forgetting to focus on their audience. That's episode 39 if you'd like to go back and check it out. The importance of the listener was again reiterated at the podcast movement conference that I attended last month, and I nodded along with those presenters 100% on board. So you may be shocked to hear that I've been screwing this up on my own podcast. I've been beating myself up a bit about this since I realized it, But I've now come up with a plan to fix it, which I'll tell you about at the end of the episode. Be sure to keep listening to find out what the changes mean for the future of this show.

But first, I want to acknowledge the fact that the thing that we are best at helping other people with is often the hardest to do for ourselves. Sometimes we are too close to the situation to analyze it properly. We're too intertwined in the day to day operations, and it's like that saying that we can't see the forest for the trees. Sometimes we need someone with an outside perspective and a bird's eye view to help us see things more clearly. And once we see clearly, it's often so obvious what we were missing. I'm really good at being the outside perspective person with the bird's eye view for other podcasters, but, apparently, I have failed a bit when it comes to my own show. I'm working on accepting the blind spot and moving forward, though the perfectionist in me is making that a little easier said than done. Let me tell you about how I came to realize my mistake, how I'm fixing it, and how you can apply this situation to your own podcast.

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with my biz bestie, Robin. We meet once a week to brainstorm, celebrate, troubleshoot, commiserate, etcetera. By the way, it's invaluable to talk through ideas with someone who's not in the day to day operations of your business, but is on a similar journey. I recently obtained my podcast growth coach certification that I was working so hard towards. Yay, me. And I was talking to Robin about my ideas for a new growth focused offer in my business. I've got the tangible details down, but I've been struggling with my messaging. Robin is a bit of a jack of all trades when it comes to online business, but she's especially good at messaging.

To fast forward and keep this story relatively brief, she basically helped me see that I'm struggling with my messaging because I'm trying to talk to people who want to start their podcast, grow their podcast, and monetize their podcast. I'm trying to talk to people who have a podcast as a passion project or a hobby, and people who have a podcast as a tool for their business. She was like, you realize you're struggling with your messaging because you're trying to talk to everyone about everything. Right? No. Somehow, I had not realized that until that conversation. It was a bit of an moment, but I still didn't fully realize how big of a mistake it was. So, apparently, the universe decided that I needed another wake up moment. When I was at the podcast movement conference, many of the presenters kept recommending a brand new book from industry leader, Tom Webster.

I bought it after I returned home from the conference and happened to dive in shortly after this conversation with Robin. It's a fantastic book. I highly recommend it. It's called the audience is listening, a little guide to building a big podcast. I'll leave a link in the show notes. As you may suspect, the book is all about the importance of your podcast audience. He emphasizes that you should be talking to just one person. That person should feel like you are making the entire show just for them.

There was one section where he said he winces when a podcaster says their show is for anyone with an interest in fill in the blank with your topic. He basically said, if that's you, you're doing it wrong and your show is never going to be a big podcast. He said it much more eloquently than that, but that's the point. And I felt like I had been smacked over the head. I was envisioning my audience as anyone with an interest in podcasting. And I thought to myself, how on earth could I make this mistake myself? I call other podcasters out on this all the time. I felt pretty stupid. But, again, the whole forest for the trees thing.

So, anyway, I want you to take a close look at your show. Who are you talking to? Does your audience fit into the anyone with an interest in blank formula? Are you talking to people at various stages of the journey? If so, you need to narrow those down. You need to talk to one listener and solve one overarching problem for them. If you're anything like me, your gut reaction is probably, oh, no. I don't wanna exclude people. I can help more than one type of person solve more than one problem. It seems silly to narrow down my audience that far. And I get it because that's how I justified my show up to this point.

I can help podcasters in all stages. I don't want to exclude people, so I'll just help everybody. And it'll be fine because it's all under the umbrella of podcasting. Well, anytime I sat down to work on my messaging, I'd get stuck because my message to an aspiring podcaster is not the same as my message to a current podcaster. Even within current podcasters, there are different goals and struggles depending on the group. So, unfortunately, it's necessary to exclude people, at least in the sense of your mission, your messaging, your content. And to be clear, you're not telling those people that they're not welcome. You're just not creating your podcast specifically to cater to them and their needs.

If they still find value and show up, fabulous. You've gotten a bonus. But your entire content creation process, the crafting of your messaging, your marketing, everything about your podcast will become clearer and easier when you're talking to just one listener. And in case it's not obvious, I'm talking about a singular listener profile. We obviously want many of the same type of person, though it is extremely helpful if there's a real life person that is the poster child for your podcast listener, and you imagine that you're talking to them every time. Identifying and speaking directly to your one ideal listener is the key for podcasting success because that listener will feel like you are talking directly to them. You're going to help them with their problem, and then they're going to tell their friend who's struggling with the same problem to listen to your show. And your audience begins multiplying.

Sometimes this process of focusing in on one listener requires communicating the change to your audience, particularly if there's going to be a change in content or something that they will see or hear that reflects the change. But sometimes, it doesn't need to be communicated. The majority of the work is for you to do behind the scenes. Okay. So all of that said, are you ready to hear about how I'm making a tiny pivot with this show? The one person that I am talking to is an online small business owner who has a podcast and wants to grow it to serve as a marketing asset for their business. Now, if that's not you, don't freak out. You are still welcome here. I would love for you to stick around, and my content isn't going to change.

Let me repeat that. The weekly content here is not changing. So if you have found value in the majority of my episodes so far, I promise that you will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. I'm communicating about this change to you because next week, the name of this podcast will change from podcasting for introverts to podcasting for solopreneurs. And you'll probably notice that and wonder what's going on. I'll dive deeper into the reasons for the change and how I landed on that new title in next week's episode. But I kind of wanted to set the stage today and give you some insight into how I got to this point. Tune in next week for more juicy details.

For now, I hope that I've convinced you to take a hard look at who you are talking to on your show. Until next time, happy podcasting.