Transcript

An introduction

Hi everyone, and welcome to my podcast, ‘Finding podcast success in a world full of millennials’ based off my autoethnographic research! As I’m sure you are all extremely aware, the generation of millennials particularly love a good podcast, including myself. There are just so many out there, spreading into a number of different genres, from crime podcasts, to gamer podcast, to book club podcasts…the list goes on and on.

So, how do successful podcasters get to the top of their genres?

When initially thinking about this question in my mind, I was thinking in relation to my own podcast ‘Synonyms for Fine’. Yes, I know, it was a classic lockdown moment of what am I doing with my life, where is my purpose…let’s start a podcast with my best friend.

I love it. I love my podcast and it is something I have true passion for. However, having started only a couple of months ago, although it has an alright following on Instagram, I was wondering how it could grow to be better. How could I engage and grow my audience? What did I need to do? Personally, I had no idea whatsoever, which is when I started my autoethnographic research.

Autoethnography, for those of you who don’t know, is essentially a qualitative inquiry using field notes and observational research methods on a particular topic or based on individual experience. This can be useful when developing research on a particular niche area of study such as podcasts. Obviously don’t take it as bible because it is based on personal experience, however, hopefully my insights and observations help you to grow your audiences, as much as it has helped me with my own podcast audience!

So, I went and checked out a new podcast starting out, Extraordinary outback stories Instagram and had a lightbulb moment to follow the first weeks of their podcast and make observations. I wanted to focus my autoethnographic research on this podcast because it related to the style of my own podcast really well, two young Australian female podcasters just starting out, trying to build listenership.

The build-up to the release, and the actual release of the podcast occurred during my research, so I was able to track all the ways they expanded their listenership. So, this podcast will look into their methods and my observations during this period.

Before continuing, make sure you have a look at my previous blog posts and my pitch video, it’ll give you a bit more background into the podcast and the field site. You can find those on my blog under University Work -> Third Year -> BCM241.

The Promotion

So, to get started Extra Ordinary Outback Stories had already gained 1000 followers when I began to record my research and observations. So, from the 27^th of July 2020 to the 2^nd of August they had any exponential increase of 1000 followers.

How did they do it you may ask? Well, they had a tonne of build-up and promotion of their podcasts release.

Essentially, they launched an account on every platform, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and their website. They then began to pour promotional content on all of these. To break it down I will take you through my observations of all of these and how they approached each.

To start off their website, was accessible through all of their accounts and initially was put in all of their bios before the actual launch of the podcast content. This could be accessed both by phone and laptop however, you do need internet to access these. The website was professionally curated with their brand logo and used a particular colour palette and fonts, which were followed across all of their media platforms. This creates brand aesthetic, which in turn creates familiarity and consistency for audience viewers. As a first-time visitor to the page, I went through each tab to understand what they had this website.

As you’ll see, they had several different tabs you could go to such as an about, a homepage, a contact us page and a newsletter page. Also, at the bottom had FAQs, which had general questions that were answered straight away so you didn’t have to ask them, and then they also had their privacy policy, which I thought was really important for ethical reasons.

Overall the website was extremely useful to understand the background to the podcast. It was highly clear and concise with a clear vision as to the purpose of the podcast, to be a voice for rural people living in Australia. The about page was really useful to learn about the both Lucy Samuels and Lucy Taylor as individuals and gave them character and personality to relate to and engage with, rather than being just voices on a podcast. At this point the listen to the podcast just had a ‘Coming soon’ sign and the various platforms it would be on, which did stay in the back of my mind when the podcast was relist. Although the podcast not being launched yet, they had sneak peak profiles of the types of people that were going to be interviewed on their podcast, which afforded me the opportunity to read up and build my excitement. For me as an audience member the ‘Contact Us’ tab was of particular interest. Titled ‘We’d love to hear from you’ it felt like an extremely inviting way of creating audience participation to gain feedback, ideas for extraordinary stories and media inquiries.

When observing their YouTube in the early days, there wasn’t too much traction, nor a lot of content. They had a promotional video, which I assume was to be used in a link on their website because thereafter they haven’t posted any other videos on their YouTube, so I don’t think it was as successful as gaining an audience base. I think they probably could’ve used their YouTube a bit more, but I understand their content was audio and image based.

They also had a Facebook page which I felt had more of their ‘hype’ type content on. I found that a lot of this content would show up on my feed when scrolling through Facebook and not me purposefully going to their page to see the content.  All of their content posted was linked to Instagram so I’ll move on to talking about specific posts with Instagram. 

So, with the Instagram page, as an audience member I felt like the place where I gained most of my access to the podcast and podcast information later on. I also felt this was where most of my intrigue toward the podcast began. When I first clicked the follow button, it also came up with their Instagram pages, which I was able to then go follow. By giving a lot of focus on their individual pages, I felt more of connection to them through observing their personalities and it gave the interviews more background because it wasn’t just a voice. When I was observing how they were building up to the date of the release their posts obviously became more and more frequent. They were sharing news articles about them, pictures of themselves doing the podcast and travelling and sneak peeks of people who were on the show. They used a lot of hashtags as well. This is useful in that it affords the opportunity for non-listeners to join the podcast based off of hashtags they might be interested in, for example, #outback #podcastsofinstagram.  On the week of the release of the show it came up on my feed as a ‘suggested for you’ as an Instagram ad, which is a way Instagram promotes business pages.

On the day the podcast came out they posted on Facebook and Instagram that morning. This was just for the episode previews, which was a short podcast trailer. I noticed a lot of people were responding to this in the comments with positive feedback and ratings on Spotify and Apple. They weren’t doing a lot of interaction with the comments however, still liked all of them. They also put lots of promotion on their story, with where to find it etc. and on their individual pages they both put posts up to promote the podcast launch as well. This all may seem an obvious way to approach promotional content, however, the little details and levels of professionalism are really important when promoting content and a podcast.

The release and content

In the second part of this podcast, I wanted to get into discussing my observations on content created by the podcast.

So, to get started I wanted to share my observations of the podcast itself. They would put out a podcast every week on a Thursday creating regularity in scheduling. They had similar posts on Instagram every week as well, with an introduction to the interviewee and the area of Australia they lived on their stories.

The structure of the actual podcast seemed to stay the same every week including an introduction to the podcast/what they are doing, a jingle, an introduction to the interviewee for that week, an anecdote, and then would jump into the interview questions.

Often the interview questions were quite simple and direct to start off but once the interview got underway the questions flowed creating a more conversational tone. This worked really well as I found that I would not really have to focus on listening rather it just came naturally as a podcast should. Having a shorter 20-minute episode every week also meant that I could slot it naturally into what I was doing for example, cooking or going for a walk. It also meant it kept within my attention span, so I think short 20-30 minute is good for a podcast length. The interview questions also were ethical in that it didn’t probe for emotional details rather they took a highly empathetic way of dealing with harder topics.

The originality of the niche they picked for their podcast, meant the interviews were highly interesting and something new for listenership. It is so important to pick a niche for your podcast, particularly as there are so many out there.

The expansion

So on to part 3, the expansion of the podcast. When I say ‘expansion’ I kind of mean what they did after the release in order continue to grow their audience.

Firstly, they created their own newsletter titled ‘The Bush Herald’. This could be subscribed to be emailed every week. This would include an overview of the podcast and other articles they themselves had written. This could also be accessed by their website.

Secondly, they began doing other weekly specials. ‘What’s cooking good looking’ was an outback recipe that would come out every Wednesday from either a listener or the interviewee. This increased audience engagement and involvement as they were now able to give something for the audience to look forward to.

In addition to this, they began doing the Book of the Week every Tuesday, which was often a recommendation from the interviewees. Toward the end of my ethnographic research they began doing giveaways of these, which also generates listener excitement and involvement.

Finally, I noticed them interacting with the audience a lot more as well with comment replies and also story reactions for example questions that audiences could answer and reactions sliders. This makes listeners feel included and makes the relationship between audience and podcaster stronger.

Just on the Instagram really quick, they tidied this up a bit by making story highlights under each of the interviewees, places they had been and the podcast in general, this means the content is saved for newcomers to watch the stories.

Conclusion

Overall the way they did the promotion, content and expansion of their podcast, enabled them to gain 3000 followers in three months. This clearly exemplifies a really good way of approaching podcasting and growing one’s audience. I know I have certainly made changes to the way I approach my own podcast that have seen benefits. I think I have definitely realised the benefits of paying attention to detail and utilising the platforms available, particularly as podcasting is not just about the podcast itself anymore.  

Anyway, I hope this has been useful as an example of how to find podcast success in a world full of millennials.

Happy Podcasting and have a good one!

x Eadie

Reference List

Taylor, L & Samuels, L, ExtraOrdinary Outback Stories, podcast, 17 September, ExtraOrdinary Media Co, viewed 28 September, < https://www.extraordinarymediaco.com/>