“Understanding our Audience”
After coming to terms with the idea of our podcast and its theme our next step was figuring out how we can learn more about our potential listeners. We knew that we target a European audience therefore our content would definitely be in English but we needed a deeper understanding.
Our first attempt was creating a questionnaire and distributing it to young people in order to learn about their opinions.
Our opening question had quite interesting responses.
Do you think young people have sufficient information regarding study/workfields? -> more than 80% NO
When choosing our social issue (youth unemployment) we discussed this a lot as a group. How misinformation and information overload regarding youth unemployment do more harm than good and eventually leave us with a big question mark. And the major no is a clear indicator others feel that way too.
Later In the questionnaire the participants were asked to answer if they did not receive support from their environment for their career choice.
We expected the majority to answer that they didn’t receive the desired support but to our surprise the results were 50–50%. This was quite an unexpected finding. This could mean that either the parents were truly supportive of their children’s choices or the child made a “more secure” choice according to their standards.
Following this question we asked them to share their experiences. Thankfully some of them did and gave us an inside look of the pressure they received to follow a more conventional career.
We also consulted our audience about their personal experiences with podcasts and were pleased to see that they specifically listen to them because they wish to learn more from specialists who are often featured in podcasts as guests. This mentality perfectly matches our approach and surely means we are on the right path and made the correct call to create our own podcast entitled “Employment Kit”.
Then, our next move was in person interviews (actually through Skype). We decided to approach young people who already follow a professional path or are aspiring to join one so we could have a well-rounded perspective. Our interviewees were:
- Olga 20 years old, University Student & Aspiring Writer, Germany
- Dionysis 18 years old, University Student, Greece
- Elena 20 Years Old, Fine Arts, Russia
- Antonis 25years old, Game Developer, Greece
- Christos 18 Years Old, High School Graduate, Greece
- Elena 20 years old, University Student, Greece
- Stefanos 24 Years Old, IT Specialist, Greece
All 7 were extremely helpful and even willing to give us personal details. Elena (Russia) described how even her family’s indirect doubt in her dream caused her to doubt herself, Stefanos (Greece) shared his fears about his dreams not coming true and Chistos (Greece) gave us food for thought whether public relations are what eventually leads to success.
In conclusion, our findings came together and cleared the picture. We now know where we aim. To young, ambitious, worried, people.
People exactly like us!
Alone Together Team members: GeorgiannaChondrou, Despoina Fragou, Angeliki Kyriazi, Konstantina Papanikolaou, Angeliki Valeri
