Exploring your niche. Is your niche to broad or too narrow?
Imagine yourself, you just finished recording another episode for your show. You have not looked at your downloads for a few days and feel optimistic that your numbers are going to have grown. Now you’ve opened up your hosting software and the feeling of disappointment sets in… your number have not gone up. First off, we have all been here. You feel like you’ve been killing it lately but you aren’t seeing results. Do not let this stop you and let you down, you have to keep going. This is the point where we need to take a step back and start to evaluate what you’re doing right and what you may be doing wrong. One thing that I found to be a problem, that I have personally experienced, is your niche. No your niche isn’t the problem, but how broad or narrow your niche is may be a contributing factor.
Your niche is the group or “market” of individuals that you are trying to appeal to and get to listen to your show. This is a crucial thing to hone in and figure out early on in your show because this group of individuals is a form of built in support group. Podcasting is a family, even if your show may be doing better or worse than somebody else within your niche; they are still going to be there for you and help you get to where you want to be. If your niche is too narrow, then your “family” or support group will not be as large and your resources may be limited.
Having a narrow niche is usually a problem that podcasters avoid, but it can still happen. This typically happens when you came up with your original idea and have narrowed it down to a specific audience. For example, if I were to start a podcast about critical care pre-hospital medicine and practices - I would stop right there because my niche is right at that happy medium where it is not too narrow or too broad. Let’s change that idea for a show to critical care pre-hospital medicine and practices to something along the lines of pre-hospital medicine and practices for clinicians in the Southwest Minnesota region. By doing this, you’ve alienated a very large portion of your audience and narrowed it down to a topic where you have a limited audience. Your show is intended to have an audience, but not one that limits it to an audience where you can “tap out” your audience. On the other hand, you can have a topic that is too broad and you can’t hone in who you need to market your show too.
The thought process of having a broad niche is adopted and modeled after shows similar to The Joe Rogan Experience or 2 Bears 1 Cave because they are appealing to everyone. Joe Rogan, Bert Kreischer, and Tom Segura all have one thing in common - that is name recognition. They have name recognition behind their names and have built their brands - this gives people the ability to hear a name or look at a logo and recognize which show/company it is. Take the Apple logo for example, most individuals can see that logo and it automatically assimilates with the Apple Corporation. If you are just starting your show, even if you have been doing it for a while, odds are you do not have that name or brand recognition. Without that, you have to ask yourself who your target audience is. If you answer yourself with “Well anyone and everyone” - that is not the right answer. Let’s go back one more time and take that podcast idea - critical care pre-hospital medicine and practices - and make that broader to try and appeal to a larger audience. Instead of that, we can take it and start a show on pre-hospital medicine. This may seem “narrow” to some, but for those that are in the world of pre-hospital care then you know that this can go down so many different avenues. We can ask ourselves “who is my target audience” - and in this case it would be pre-hospital providers. Once again, too broad. Of course, you want to be able to appeal and obtain the largest audience you can. In other words you need to thing smaller.
Honing in your show and finding that specific audience can take time, but you will know when that time is. This may be one of the more difficult tasks that you didn’t think of initially. It may be a stressful task to accomplish, but remember why you’re here. You had an idea and want to share your input on that idea. Let that drive you to the point where you can find your niche, and [ amplify ] your voice.
