Know Your Audience And The Message You Want Them To Hear

When planning your podcast strategy always keep your target audience in mind.  Think of the type of message you want to push to that audience.  Each episode thereafter, or tweet or image or Facebook/Google+ post, makes up the content of that broader message you want them to hear or see.

When LittleSmasher gets involved with a client, the first thing we do is sit down and listen.  We want to know who they are, what they do and who it is they do it for.

Focus

It may seem obvious on the face of it but when you think about it and try to articulate it, it becomes a fascinating focussing function.  Let me faff on further.

In coming to understand what your podcast output needs to be, we need to understand your audience and your desired message for that audience.

Bazillion ... Spewing Forth

For us, it's a bit like letting the sheep out of the pen and then gradually herding them back in.  A bazillion things that you do comes spewing forth and as we understand each and every one of them we get closer to knowing exactly how your podcast episodes should run.  In fact, it serves as a great 'team building' process.  

Team Building Exercise

One particular client in the Education world wanted a podcast to focus on one of their internal departments that provided their students with career-focussed services.  It involved three people.  None of them truly knew what each other did nor how they all fitted into the bigger picture of their department.  By the end of the process they knew exactly what they and their colleagues were all about and they had a new, much improved and clearer way of articulating what it was they all did for their clients.  

Recording the podcast was like a perfect little team building exercise for them.

And it started with understanding their audience.  Not what their bosses wanted to hear.  Nor what they thought was the safest way of promoting themselves was.

The result was a very clear and concise, and very useful, podcast episode.

So, first and foremost, who is your target audience?  Is there a peripheral audience you would like to be sensitive towards?  And what do you want to tell your Target Audience?

Sounds simpler than it actually is.  Which is why everyone feels so much better after the initial podcast series consultation with us.

Honest.