Acast is right: look at podcasts as a social channel to succeed

Opinion 

Podcasts and podcasters do not exist in a vacuum, and advertisers need to think of them as part of influencer culture.

We need to understand that podcasters are influencers in the same way as successful creators on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube are influencers – they are experts in self-publishing a range of content in a way that an audience responds to, no matter which platform they started on.

As Acast CEO Ross Adams told The Media Leader recently, podcast is no longer a purely audio medium — it should be considered an influencer platform alongside TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.

Podcasting follows the rules of all social media. It’s a self-publishing platform; the content is specific to the platform; you can publish as often as you want; anyone can do it; you can build an audience over the long term; you can interact with that audience and — like other channels — podcasting has specific algorithms that point to success.

As with all social media, success lies in the power of your audience and in understanding the features that make your content a success.

Of course, with podcasting it also helps to be an expert in some of the specific technicalities involved, but not every successful podcaster starts out with those skills.

Podcasts need a multichannel strategy

Yes, podcasting is a standalone platform, but the most successful podcasts don’t see it as solely an audio medium — they take a multichannel strategy as a starting point, curating different content for different platforms as they go.

YouTube is arguably the third biggest distribution platform for podcasting after Spotify and Apple, which is why few podcasts are now recorded in a dark, non-descript audio bunker.

The News Agents, for example, understands that its content will need to work across platforms, so they film (as well as record) the shows in a studio that is not unlike a Newsnight studio.

“The running theme with Boris Johnson is – it’s someone else’s fault, and rules are for other people.”

The News Agents on the ex-PM admitting he misled Parliament- but only because he was told to.

On @GlobalPlayer
🎧 https://t.co/SdyBDl7qyY pic.twitter.com/FWCLespK1z

— The News Agents (@TheNewsAgents) March 21, 2023

Our own series, Dish, has Angela Hartnett and Nick Grimshaw in a kitchen, which — as well as making the guests feel more comfortable — looks much better for other platforms.

Likewise, The Therapy Crouch is YouTube/Instagram ready from the outset, thanks to the cosy setting and the professional hair and make-up of presenters Peter Crouch and Abbey Clancey.

As long as the idea always sits firmly in the middle, podcasting works across different audio and visual social media.

The point is to make content that travels, driving a wider reach to build influence and increase the power of the franchise.

Steve Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO often runs well over an hour, so chunking that up to run in short clips makes the experience more accessible to a wider audience.

Podcast creators engage in long conversations, but always with an ear for shorter clips that they know will travel.

It makes sense to ask certain types of questions — often the more divisive ones — to engineer soundbites that will perform well on other social media.

What about search in podcast?

Podcasting, however, still trails other social media when it comes to search, which is another reason why it’s so valuable to be across platforms, where search is more evolved and efficient.

In audio, it’s not as easy as it could be to find the content you are looking for, or to discover new shows, but this should start to get easier over time.

Google talks about bringing audio content to the fore and making it more a part of natural search — and this is where having a visual clip will serve a podcast well, because people are naturally drawn towards pictures if they are available.

Different social platforms offer different ways of measuring, too, which opens up access to new data and feedback.

Think about eyes, ears and clicks

When you make a podcast, you’re thinking about ears, eyes and clicks, finding ways to create multiple touchpoints that build audiences via different routes, bringing a wider range of consumers within reach.

Not that other social media is there purely to drive traffic: even the most devoted podcast listeners often like to move between Instagram, TikTok or YouTube in search of visual references to complement the audio experiences.

But we all spend a lot of time on our phones and on social media, so we have to be able to make them all work together.

Podcasting is still a unique, formidable standalone platform in its own right.

With a podcast, you get the immersive experience: it keeps you company, requires your full attention, takes you deep into a subject, and gives advertisers access to engaged audiences who spend much longer with the content than they do on other social platforms.

But audio doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and podcast stars are as much a part of influencer culture as any TikTok, YouTube or Instagram stars.

The whole territory has opened up for a huge range of talent, and podcasting must claim its rightful space in that dynamic.

Ben Kerr is managing director at SE Creative Studios.