What Is A Niche And Why Is It Important?
Creating a podcast can be easy, as long as you have the right equipment, software, and the time to put into it. However, this isn’t all there is to podcasting—you need to make sure that you’re not just investing your time and money into a podcast, but that you’re doing so wisely.
Let’s take a look at one of the most important things you need to be aware of before you run off with a mic and start recording something that may not take off.
Find Your Niche
Podcasts are easy to make, but you have to stand out. If you don’t stand out, your show may not gain any traction. You want to get listeners; you want people to hear what you have to say. Like most creative outlets, you need a niche! Your niche is going to need to be specific to you, and recognizable. Ideally, your business is going to be in its own niche—so your podcast can follow your business rather closely.
Some examples of niches are:
- Finance: such as cryptocurrency, frugal living, budgeting, saving for retirement, taxes
- Business: building a startup, entrepreneurship, freelancing, business finance management
- Marketing: content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, SEO, pay-per-click advertising
- Sales: B2B, B2C, sales process and strategies, sales hacks and templates, sales software and apps
- Design and development: UX design, web development, app development, eCommerce, website security
For this section, it depends heavily on the type of business you’re running. Perhaps you sell skincare products for the frugal buyer, you could have podcasts on the health, frugality, and lifestyle of using your product as well as podcasts on the way you market your product. You can get really creative here, because if your product or business is the focus of the podcast, you can break into little niches to talk about how your product fits said niches.
But Why Is The Niche Important?
Having a niche to expand from means that you can deduce what other topics you can branch out into. Say your podcast is about your product, a skincare cream that was made by an all-female company with ties to a specific culture. Your blog might talk about the culture of an all-female business, the culture behind the product, the sales, marketing, finances, and more.
Having a niche means you can say what goes and doesn’t—and it’s easy to see what fits and doesn’t fit. Niche podcasts are often “I need to read this,” in urgency, instead of “I’ll read it if I have time,” such as celebrity podcasts.
Listeners tend to prefer consistency, they want to learn more about your niche, not have to wade through unrelated topics to get to the niche. Your listeners probably listened to your podcasts, got interested and quickly started looking at your other podcasts. If you disappoint them with unrelated content, they may stop listening.
Eventually you’ll have analytics that tell you about your audience, and can tailor when you upload new podcasts and what you talk about suiting what is getting the most views. And last but not least, having a niche will make it easier for you to monetize your podcast by affiliating with like brands.