One Day It'll All Make Cents

For the last 20 years Marc Maron has been a working stand up comic, he has been on the Late Show with David Letterman numerous times, on  Conan O’Brien’s late night over 40 times but building a dedicated fan base had escaped him.  Maron came up with some of comedy’s biggest names Louis CK, Patten Oswalt and Sarah Silverman all of whom had crossed over to much larger success on TV and on stage while he toiled in half filled comedy rooms continuing to be the comics’ comic.  For almost 20 years Marc worked at his craft of stand up comedy but marrying it to commerce  alluded him, he regularly discusses how he became jealous of his friends and bitter that he couldn’t find his own success.

Then in 2009, fresh off a stint on political radio and in career limbo  he decided to try out something new and started out a free podcast where he would interview comics, mostly his friends, and also discuss things that were going on his life.  At that point Marc had very little understanding of social media and had no idea just how much it would impact his career.  As fans of the comedians Marc was interviewing searched for content of their favorite comics clips of Marcs podcast began appearing on youtube, then comedy blogs and comedy nerds started taking notice and shortly their after WTF had become a social media darling.  Marc also joined in using twitter, facebook and his own email list and blog to promote his podcast. As the podcast became more and more popular, currently one of the most downloaded comedy podcasts so did Marc’s live comedy shows and he very quickly began seeing sold out venues full of ” his people”.  It only took him 20 years to become an overnight success

Marc Maron is a great example of how valuable social media can be for marketing to niche markets.  Marc was always funny and would have always appealed to comedy geeks like me, it was the connection that took time.  For brands looking to find their niche market their process is not any different than Marc’s.   Find where your audiences’ discussions are taking place, are their specific blogs or message boards? Are they able to search for you in the places they look ? It is easier than ever to connect with niche audiences but you need to make sure you are using the same platforms as them and that when they want to find you, they can.  If your not you will be left in constant state of WTF