The Infinite Dial

Is Podcasting "niche" content? If niche is defined as "N" number of people who are genuinely passionate about a given subject area, and "N" is some number less than one million, then I suppose it is. Niches, however, can overlap and be aggregated--and niches are where audiences become engaged, and more receptive to messages, motivation and calls to action.

No one knows this better than Susan Bratton, who is both the Vice Chair of the Association for Downloadable Media and CEO of Personal Life Media, a podcasting startup that produces and hosts over two dozen weekly shows on topics relating to personal development. Though the shows are varied and each serve different niches, taken together they are, in essence, a network--all tied to Susan and Tim Bratton's vision of personal transformation and empowerment. This allows Personal Life Media to be very clear about both the nature and desires of its audience and the best fit for potential advertisers and sponsors--the keys to driving real revenues (and not remnant buys or "value adds")

Susan is also a podcaster herself, and hosts her own weekly show called Dishy Mix that features interviews with some of the best minds in marketing and technology, ranging from Rex Briggs to John Battelle. I literally do not leave home without the latest episode on my iPhone.

I sat down with Susan to pick her brain about her company, her vision for podcasting, and what broadcasters can learn from her experience:

What's your elevator pitch?

That we are a network of 25 weekly shows focused on frank discussion and deep conversation about many aspects of self-empowerment from life-purpose to creativity to weight loss to relationships and intimacy to anti-aging and longevity to spirituality to sustainable living to meditation and the men's movement and women's empowerment.
We fit a niche that provides content much more detailed than mainstream media, and it's on demand and personal.

Who listens to your programming? How would you describe your audience?

My audience are cultural creatives, movers in the renaissance generation who purposefully seek out a depth of information that's targeted to grown ups - our listeners are high-income, highly educated, tech-savvy men and women typically between the ages of 35-55.

What makes you special? What are some notable successes you have had?

We've grown from zero to over 400,000 monthly listeners in a year. We have created a body of work of more than 1,000 episodes with over 500 interviews of the most important thought-leaders in the world of self-empowerment and spirituality. We have also created a technology platform to scale from 25 to 2,500 shows and have just launched a new podcast "widget" that lets our fans put our shows on their blogs, websites and social media points of presence to share our content with their friends.

What is the most important thing you have learned through the process of getting your businesses off the ground?

Podcasters do not come from the world of advertising and marketing and need a lot of education around the importance of ad standards and market research to support the monetization of their content. That clients are more ROI focused than they've ever been due to both the contraction in the economy and the effect of Google's impact on online advertising. That there's an amazing passion in the hearts of podcasters to be in service to their listeners and viewers that should be tapped to result in revenue for their effort. That I love working heart in hand with my husband to bring this amazing content to the universe.

What advice would you give the radio industry about downloadable media? And what can you learn from them?

Using terrestrial radio to draw your audiences online is an amazing advantage. I started with Zero Brand, Zero Audience. Radio industry execs can take their content and deliver it into a new distribution channel to expand the opportunity for revenue generation in partnership with their existing advertisers. They have so much to leverage!

Thanks, Susan!

Want to know more about making podcasting work for you? Make sure you attend our panel on Thursday at the NAB and bring your questions!