Find your target audience.

When I launched my podcast, I was brainstorming ways I could officially "launch" it through a video on my personal YouTube channel. At the time, I was obsessed with trying to challenge videos, such as those made by MrBeast and Airrack. The average new teen YouTuber mindset.

I came up with this idea that I pitched to my co-host: a challenge video inspired by Mr. Lemoncello's Library (by Chris Grabenstein, a great series I read as a kid) where a group of contestants are stuck in a library and must solve clues to escape the library before a deadline. These clues would lead the contestants on a journey through the stories of different people's lives, showcasing the power of storytelling. Everything would be themed around the podcast that we'd be launching, and the videos ultimate goal would be to promote the podcast.

My co-host liked the idea, but he brought up an interesting question; what age range would participate in and watch this video? It was a question I hadn't even bothered thinking of. I realized that the main age that enjoys this sort of content is between 10-13, which was great but definitely not the target audience of our podcast.

Podcasts, I've realized, tend to be watched earliest towards the end of high school. Teenagers under the age of 15 simply don't have the attention spam (from my observations) to sit through a podcast episode that's not a short clip with colorful subtitles, dramatic music, and an overlay of Subway Surfers on the bottom.

This opened up the opportunity for us to focus our podcast to a specific target audience, and after some feedback from our listeners, we realized that the best audience for us is college students.

If we had launched our podcast through this challenge video, we'd have potentially gotten subscribers, but not ones that would have enjoyed and watched our podcast episodes. Having realized the importance of having a target audience, I now brainstorm what mine is before every new project or initiative.