Making podcasts visual for promotion
Podcasting is getting more attention than ever. On-demand audio storytelling has been around for more than a decade but the medium has really exploded in the last two years. Arguably, this moment took off with Serial, the This American Life spin-off that some two million people downloaded in its first months. Since late 2014 hundreds (if not thousands) of podcasts have launched with a wide range of style and production value — from foul-mouthed amatuer interviewers with a mic and a garage (HT Marc Maron) to large teams of seasoned radio journalists with studios, travel budgets, house bands, and engineering chops.
Major players in this media landscape include Gimlet, Radiotopia, WNYC Studios, NPR, Earwolf, CBC, Audible, Midroll and Heard to name a few. Some of these companies are newer, some have made audio content for decades. Whatever their pedigree, all are competing for listeners’ earspace, whether that’s in a car, subway, gym, cubicle or kitchen. And in some instances, we are seeing corporations and institutions breaking into the podcast game as well, as entities look for new markets to engage potential audiences and customers.
Recently major tech companies are scrambling for a piece of the podcasting pie. Google Play launches this month. Pandora, which has 78 million monthly users, began its podcast distribution with the second season of Serial (chopped up into pop-song-length chapters). Spotify, Pandora’s music-streaming competitor with roughly the same audience size, will supposedly launch its long-awaited podcasting foray next month. The podcast fervor could be a bubble, but for now it seems only to be growing, with new podcast listeners in the U.S. up 17% in the last year.
Within the fray podcasters face a problem: How do I distinguish a show within this noise? Some of the podcasters noted above air on public radio while others— like Radiotopia and Gimlet shows— cross-pollinate within their networks. (Setting aside business model issues for a minute, if established gatekeepers dominate the major networks, the industry will likely suffer the same lack of diversity that radio has, pointedly summed up with the phrase “NPR voice.”) Producers with decades of experience say there are basically two dependable routes to attract listeners. The first is claw your way up the iTunes charts — tweets from famous podcast guests and consistently producing high-quality content help. The second path to a bigger audience is to get a segment of your podcast played on one of the bigger podcasts, such as This American Life, 99% Invisible, Radiolab, etc.
Neither channel — iTunes and podcast cross-promotion — relies on or greatly benefits from the ways other digital media reaches audience: that is, social media, email, and other platforms people virtually occupy. Podcasters we’ve talked with say there’s little evidence social drives any significant amount of listeners. It’s possible people see the Facebook post and then go to the podcast app to download the episode (and hopefully subscribe), but the correlation— let alone causation— is nearly impossible to suss out. That will remain so until mobile audio players integrate more seamlessly with social media.
Many outlets have chased in vain the elusive social audio. There’s a built-in incompatibility of audio with the highly visual social media and the internet at large. But there’s no reason podcasts can’t have complementary visuals to invigorate their online presence. Enter RadioScope. We’re a dedicated team of radio and video journalists who understand both great audio and compelling pictures. We aim to produce creative visuals using animation, impressionistic video, photo manipulation, data viz and maps. This kind of content can not only augment online presence but also open up new distribution channels such as Youtube, Vimeo and Facebook video. We hope to help podcasters jumpstart influence and audience by creating promotional materials and/or complementary content like characters sketches and contextual explainers.
