Generalist podcasts (these are shows with broad topics like “business” or “comedy”) can struggle to gain traction. They try to appeal to everyone but end up offering no clear value proposition to anyone.
While creators often fear that niching down will exclude potential listeners, the opposite is true. In a crowded market, specificity is the only way to be found. Listeners search for solutions to specific problems, not vague categories. By narrowing your focus (like “improv techniques for cognitive brain stuff”), you become the more obvious choice for certain topics that people are specifically looking for help in.
In this micro-episode:
- Why broad topics lead to high competition and low discoverability
- The SEO benefit of specific keywords and content pillars
- Why a smaller, specific audience is more valuable than a broad, disengaged one
Resources: Find more episodes and subscribe at stereoforest.com/minute.
Transcript
WEBVTT
::Generalist podcasts, that's really broad topics like I'm doing a podcast about business.
::They don't do well because they're trying to appeal to everyone, super wide audience, and it's not really
clear what you're offering.
::A podcast that's about business is not really clear to the listener about what topics are actually going to
be covered, if it's relevant, or if it's going to be like so high level,
::big picture that I'm not going to be able to apply what I learned from that to the thing that I'm doing today.
::And when we niche down, like it really granular, I'm pointing to myself because I do an improv how-to
podcast that's related to cognitive brain stuff.
::The people like us that do really niche down topics, we're worried about excluding too many people from our
potential audience.
::In both cases, we're wondering how are we going to compete with all the other podcasts? What's the better
way to go? Now, the problem is if you go to that really pretty wide topic, like I'm doing a podcast about
business, or say if I went really wide with my improv podcast and I made it about anything to do with comedy
from movies to stand up, your actual competitors are going to be a huge number in that wide category.
::is not being found at all. So if your podcast is about something very specific, people have a chance of
finding you and then you have a chance at gaining an audience. Like when somebody has a specific problem,
they're going to search for a specific solution. Like you want to think about these kind of keywords,
basically, if you're developing your show or a content plan. And whatever those keywords are can
::the content pillars for you to focus on for your series or your show.
::And then you have the opportunity to become like just the obvious choice to help somebody with a specific
problem.
::Building an audience this way means that they're going to care a lot more about the things that you say.
::You're not going to have this wide appeal to everybody for sure,
::But you're going to appeal to that smaller number of people who actually care about what you're putting out
there. And you can always branch out a bit down the road. I'm Jen DeHaan, and this is the Credibility Minute.
Find more episodes and get in touch with me at stereoforest.com slash minute.