To podcast or not to podcast? Stitchered up, and how to create PR in the spoken world.

Welcome to this episode of speak piano. My name is Jim James, and I'm your host. And on this podcast, I'd like to share some thoughts and some insights and also some technologies that you can use for PR. I've been helping companies to get noticed for over 25 years. And I've also run my own companies and built them through using public relations. Now, I want to talk today about podcasting. Obviously, we're listening to one now so you may be a convert already, but it's the one of my former clients recently has announced that they are going to be having a podcast. Now this is interesting to me because it shows that podcasting is moving into the corporate branding arena, as well as being a consumer lifestyle platform and what a platform it has become. There was some research just released on the 19th of March this year by Edison research infinite dial and it suggests There are currently over 1 million different podcast series and episodes out there. Now, Apple podcast, which is really the still the dominant distributor of podcasts has over half a million active podcast shows including content in more than 100 languages. So as I launched introduce, speak PR, I think I have to be mindful of any kind of ambition for where this podcast is gonna take me but I'm enjoying it. And I'm really loving the feedback that I'm getting from producing the show. So, podcast listeners, when they've been surveyed, say that they are listening by and large in transit. 22% are listening in the car, the other places are in, for example, the gym and home seems to be where people are listening to cost the least I suppose because they've got family friends, but they've also got the other. The other mediums to to be logging on to and watching or doing. Exactly contradictory though is that crime and thrillers and comedy are the number one and number two genre. And yet the workplace is the number three place where people are listening. So does that mean they're they're actually tuning in listen to thrillers and local crime stories while they're at work, maybe. But that's really not my business. I'm hosting this podcast on Apple podcasts, but also it's going out through Stitcher, through pod bean, and Spotify. And so there are a growing number of distribution platforms. I'm hosting on buzzsprout and that manages the hosting and then it distributes to these other platforms through an RSS feed. So which stands for really Simple Syndication if anybody would like to know now stitcher have over 100,000 independent podcasts listed on their, on their platform. And last year they they had 6.8 million episodes published. Now, interestingly enough, or perhaps sensibly enough, the 17 top shows in 2010 are still in the top 100. I'd imagine they're probably still the top 20 really. So it shows that longevity is going to be one of the keys to doing anything in podcasting if that becomes one of your plans. Now, what another report has been showing is that episodes are getting shorter. On average, the episodes are getting down just by you know, two and a half minutes. So it seems to be there's a trend towards either extremely short or extremely long form content. The listeners, depending on what you're working to promote, appear to be the 18 through 34 age group, which are the largest number of listeners, but it's my age group, the 55, down to 30, fives that are more dedicated in terms of the number of listening hours. And also the number of shows that we add to our favourites. So it is a Gen X are are probably more browsers but they're also looking at other mediums as well. Whereas those of us that are seeing this as an alternative to listening to radio, for example, like instead of listening to radio four, I now listen to my podcasts. So it's really becoming a narrow cast for specific interest areas. So we've got apparently as well. The stitch Our CEO Eric Dane said that the data that they found in their report, which has just recently published just this week shows that unique the unique appeal of podcasting makes its fans the most loyal and passionate of any medium. Now, this was backed up and prompted my interest because I had watched a chap called Finn mcentee on LinkedIn and he shared shared an infographic, which is really an inverted triangle and what mcentee had shown worth it on his YouTube channel, he has 200,000 followers, and he says that gives him the lowest engagement, but he puts out the most entertainment. On Instagram. He has 35,000 followers. And on podcast on LinkedIn, he has 10,000 but he says he gets the highest engagement and produces the most information. on the podcast and LinkedIn platform, so what he's saying is that podcasting enables us to create intimacy and also understanding. Now from a PR point of view, of course, this is golden, because public relations is about understanding and helping people's perceptions to be aligned to our view of ourselves. So, if public relations is about getting some depth of story, which is why we always like to try have interviews. And while we always like to have long form articles published, because these give more than the headlines they give the texture of what the company is doing. Then podcasting is a fantastic medium to be using. Now, weekly engagement seems to be according to this A report from from stitcher that Monday through Thursday is the prime time for people to be listening. And it mirrors this idea that most people are listening when they're in transit, when they're going, for example, to work or to the gym or in between places. Interestingly enough, South Korea, according to a statistical report this I want to say South Korea leads consumption with 55% of respondents to a survey saying they listen to podcast, followed by Spain at 40% of their respondents Sweden, Australia, the USA only 33 Italy, Canada, France, Japan, Germany, and only 18% of respondents in the UK said that they listen to podcast well. Off calm the Office of Communications in the UK say in a recent press release that podcasts are booming and they're saying that nearly 6 million adults are tuning in Each week. So there's various statistics being bandied around here. But what undeniable is that as a medium platform, podcasts are here to stay, because it's such a low cost, an easy way to produce content, if you host on a platform like buzzsprout as I do, or you can also use another awkward libsyn. For example, you can distribute to Apple iTunes, to Stitcher, to Spotify, and to the recently launched podcasts by Google. at no charge, I pay $12 a month to host two hours a month of audio. And you can increase the amount of storage and increase the payments. But it's remarkably good value by anybody's terms, if you're going to distribute content to people that aren't subscribed in the listening. Now, one of the obvious implications, though is that the the podcasting world is extremely crowded in a way. It's a bit like in the old days when we used to publish company newsletters and people used to think they could publish newsletters to compete with the mainstream media. But podcast like print newsletters that we used to produce in house require a lot of resources. Now I'm finding that it's taken me about an hour to research a show, and then 20 minutes to record in 20 minutes to edit and upload. So for each 20 minutes, it's possibly taking me two hours of pre production and post production now, are not very efficient. I'm just practising and learning, but for sure, it's going to take some time and Ryan Williams, who wrote an article about this in the influencer economy suggest it takes twice as long as you think it will take and I think I found that's probably absolutely the case. Now, not everybody, of course, has to create a podcast of their own. So being a brand, it's possible to create different strategies for podcast without trying to post your own show. Now, General Electric did this some years ago about 2017 with a programme called the message, and it was an eight part science fiction podcast series that connected listeners with what the GE brand is all about, which is about science and the impact of science on the world without selling the GE brand. So GE took the approach of being a little like the soap operas, which the reason that they're called soap operas is because they were originally sponsored by the detergent companies, because they knew that the it was the housewives at home who are watching TV during the daytime and so shows like Days of Our Lives are sponsored by Procter and Gamble and the like, and Unilever, and that's why they got the name of soap operas. The Shopify, the online e commerce has a site called thank god, it's Monday about what works and what doesn't work in entrepreneur entrepreneurial life. And the way that mark McDonald, who's the Content Manager, this process, they prefer audio content over traditional advertising, because they'd rather be the content than the advertising because creating something people want to consume that rather than interrupting something they want to ignore is more powerful. In other words, if you are creating the content that people are interested in, then you're getting the loyalty. Whereas if you're simply interrupting them, then you're probably creating some sense of annoyance. Now the Umpqua bank, which is ump, qu a bank created a podcast back in 2017, called Open account. And they had a high profile put crossed host. And they wanted to talk about America's cultural taboos, which is money. And they had Frank chats about making losing and living with money. But a quick check shows that actually, they only got to 21 episodes. Now the distance, which is from the guys, that created rework, which is Basecamp, the software company, they had a strategy which is to interview only companies that have been around for at least 25 years. It was diverse and it was 15 minute episodes, just a bit shorter. Now look at their website shows they got 258 episodes, and then they stopped and now it's called the rework podcast which is the same name as that The book that they've got, which is talking about how they have built Basecamp, both as a culture and as a product for people to work remotely. Sephora launched also in 2017, a podcast called lip stories, which I thought were brilliant for my daughter. But they just managed to get to 15 episodes. Now, the the zip recruiter, guys who most of us will have heard recently on pretty much every podcast launched a podcast as well called rise and grind with a chap called daymond john. So they worked with daymond john from the Shark Tank, to create a series focused on the hustle and the pursuit of success in business. Now, plainly there was maybe more hustle and more pursued than there was actually success because they also only managed to get 19 episodes. out of that. So, podcasting is a little bit of a marathon as I reached my sort of 30th episode, I have a target to get to 365 episodes, I really want to get an episode six days a week with entrepreneurs working. In my experience, six days a week, if we're lucky, we get Sunday off, and I think we should because otherwise, our health starts to suffer. So I produce this podcast six days a week, because I think that as often as entrepreneurs need to think about the public relations and the communications of their company. At least, I know that for all the companies I've run over the last 25 years in Asia and in the UK. There isn't a day when I'm not looking and thinking about how I can do it better. And I find myself listening now that the children are a bit older, to podcasts, when they're doing something else and when I'm walking by My my Beagle in the countryside. So I think that the key message then for podcasting is that it needs to be in alignment with your company brand. My company's role is to help other entrepreneurs and businesses to speak about what they do. And sharing. As I'm doing like this, the depth and the texture of what we do is fantastic because it's so much more vibrant than text. text can be read, you know, 800 to 1000 words, but it's impossible to communicate all the nuances really simply with the writing. So, podcasting is a channel of communication and my work is communication. So they're in alignment. I am not trying to communicate with the whole world. I just want to speak to business people or people in charge of marketing businesses. So I have a niche I also don't need to try and communicate nor intend to communicate with millions. But maybe 10s or hundreds of people will find what I'm sharing and the insights and the tools that I'm sharing to be a value. So I think what we have to do if we're starting a podcast, if you're thinking about starting a podcast is think if you can follow it through, or if you can take the sort of approach that some like GE has done, and sponsor or participate in podcast, or to be interviewed by people that have already got podcasts, who have got the audience that you want, that's the easiest and the cheapest, and the least commitment route into podcasting. If you do want to get into podcasting, my experience has been it takes more time than you think. But it can be very rewarding. But it's also part of an integrated strategy, in my view for my business to public relations, business We have the podcasts, we have the newsletter, we have the website and we have the speak PR video series. So it's part of a holistic approach to communicating what we do. So podcasting can be a fabulous way to learn information, and also to share information. And ultimately, to echo what the Stitcher CEO said. There's a belief in the unique and intimate appeal of podcasting, which makes people loyal, and passionate. And ultimately, that's what we want from our own employees, from our partners, and from our customers and future customers. And I certainly hope that by sharing on speak PR, I'm giving you some engagement, making you feel maybe some passion as well about what you can do with your business and your PR, and that you may even decide that you'll come to our website, subscribe to our newsletter, which is East West PR calm where we share this and more tips. about how you can get yourself noticed and build your company brand and your business. So with that, I say thank you for listening to this episode of speak PR. And I wish you great health, a profitable business and the people communicating