If your podcast and its digital assets are optimized, and you’re being distributed on multiple platforms, you’re going to naturally reach more people.
Reach is about how many people you are actually reaching with each episode. Not the total amount of episodes that are downloaded, but we’re talking about a small period of time, of how many people were reached when this new episode came out.
And that’s not just the podcast platform itself, but it also looks at your other metrics. YouTube, even social media, how many people were initially reached on that first blast, per se.
Ultimately, Reach helps you understand your audience growth, what audience is into, what they’re not into, how much they listen, when they listen, and really what your episodes do from that first initial hit and how the ripple effect goes out from there.
Tying back to resonate and rank, reach is a major part of those because if you’re optimized and you’re being distributed on multiple platforms, and I’m not talking about social media platforms and talking about the main search platforms and the main podcasting platforms, then you’re going to reach more people just naturally.
If those things aren’t set up, you’re not going to. If your search terms and the content that you talk about aren’t consistent, then you’re not going to reach the right people in that way. So there’s a bit of a caveat when it comes to reach.
Even if your reach is relatively low, if you’re reaching the right people, awesome. Keep at it.
If not, and you’re reaching the wrong people, then you wanna be able to make a shift so that you’re focusing more specifically on who that ideal audience member is.
This gets back to the audience, it always does.
And if they’re actually connecting with, they’re clicking through things, they’re listening, you can see even in the emails that go out that people will click through, or they’re opening, they’re interested, that’s even part of the reach.
And when people are listening to things, you can tell that they’re going through it a bit longer when you get feedback from people every so often about a specific episode that you had. That’s a piece of the reach, but really, what you want to look at is how do you reach as many of the right people as possible?
By setting up the things that are kind of basic in a sense of the distribution, making sure that you’re optimized, I say basic in a sense of like mechanical, like just make sure those things are set up. Once those are set up, you’re naturally just going to reach more people, and then you’ll start to reach more of your specific audience.
Another thing that really helps with reach is having high-quality backlinks and having high-quality links that are going out from your site.
To give an example. On my podcast, I have guests who come on, and they’ll share different links like their website, program, or social links, or whatever. I always make sure that those links are seen by the Google search engine and that they will also kick back to me.
So if somebody has my podcast on their website because it was an episode they were in, and they have a link going back to my website, that’s a backlink. That shows Google, this website is sharing content out, but it’s also getting nods and kudos back from other people.
If that podcast guest who was on the show has a really high domain authority website, then that is a really high-quality backlink, which will ultimately help with reach, which will ultimately help with rank because you’re resonating.
Do you see how all this stuff ties together?
Frequently Asked Questions About Reaching Your Right Podcast Audience
Question: What is an ideal audience, and why is it important to identify them?
Answer:
Your ideal audience is the audience you would ideally like to reach. I have found that most podcasters, when they start, have a lot of the same characteristics as their ideal audience members.
Think of the ideal audience as a group of people who deeply love and cherish the information you talk about on your podcast. By identifying your ideal audience, you’re able to figure out what they look for and listen to on the topics that you’re speaking about, and therefore be able to craft your message to speak to them from your unique angle.
Question: How can I research and understand my ideal audience’s needs and preferences?
Answer:
I think for most podcasters, an easy place to start is with themselves. If you are, or have, some of the same characteristics as your ideal audience, then you probably already understand some of their wants, needs, and preferences.
However, whether you fit within your ideal audience or not, doing keyword research that starts with your core topic buckets will help you understand what people are actually searching for and set you up to be able to speak directly to those topics from your unique angle and attract the audience that appreciates your message.
Question: What strategies can I use to effectively reach and engage with my ideal audience?
Answer:
I truly believe that the best strategy for reaching your right and ideal audience is by understanding who they are and doing your best to be able to resonate with them, and setting yourself and your podcast up to be searchable on search engines, podcast directories, and databases.
Additionally, doing in-depth keyword research will help you to understand exactly what people are searching for and set you up to create content that speaks to those topics.
Learn How Podcast Mentorship Can Help You
If you want to learn more and dive deeper into how to reach your right audience, reach out to me or schedule a FREE Podcast Strategy Session to get started.
