We’re deep into Week Three of social distancing during the Coronavirus pandemic, and we’re working on ways to keep our clients connected with their clients, customers, and colleagues. At M&C, we’re all former journalists, so it only makes sense that we’re leaning on our expertise in producing content to help our clients communicate their goals, push out critical information, and stay connected with their audiences.
We’re honored to produce an incredible podcast called Hope With Answers: Living With Lung Cancer for Lung Cancer Foundation of America. It’s been a fantastic way to share timely, accurate, useful information from some of the nation’s top lung cancer doctors about how Covid-19 is affecting the lives of people living with lung cancer. We’ve produced two episodes and we’re ready to produce more quickly as information changes.
There a few reasons podcasts are such a powerful tool to incorporate into your public relations plan:
The PEW center cited Edison Research and Triton Digital Survey Data showing the percentage of Americans who have listened to a podcast has substantially increased over the last decade. As of 2019, 51% of Americans ages 12 or older have ever listened to a podcast and 32% have listened to a podcast in the past month, up from 26% in 2018 and just 9% in 2008. Furthermore, 22% of those 12 and older said they have listened to a podcast in the last week, up from 7% when this was first measured in 2013.
According to PodcastingInsights.com, listeners tend to be between the ages of 18-54 and lean slightly male. Research shows listeners tend to be affluent, educated, and gravitate to ad-free or ad-light podcasts.
Podcasts are a fantastic element of owned content. What does that mean? It means you control the topics, the guests, and the message. It’s a chance for you to “deep dive” into a particular topic meaningfully, taking the time you need to really explore an issue. It means you’re not trying to cram your message into a 30-second sound bite. Sounds like a good idea, right?
Podcasts are also relatively inexpensive to produce. We’ve got a professional microphone (the Yeti by Blue Microphones), some editing equipment and technical know-how, and a solid internet connection that lets us record remote interviews on Zoom videoconferencing software. We use Dropbox to move files around and Google for Work to collaborate. And, we’ve developed an internal system down that lets us produce a podcast in a couple of days, getting critical information out quickly.
At M&C, we’ve got years of experience producing content in lots of different formats: audio, video, websites, in print, you name it. The common element is knowing how to tell a good story, how to make it interesting, and how to make the complicated clear. Podcasts are a powerful tactic to include in your public relations plan to help clients stay connected, pandemic or no.
