Podcasts don’t need breakouts, they just need people
“Why doesn’t audio go viral?” is the wrong question
Podcast producers and publishers have been entertained for the past few years with the challenge about why audio doesn’t go viral. I’ve read so many articles that start with this question — and they all fail to answer it. I’m no longer interested. I think it’s the wrong question. I’m less worried about pitching a sound clip of someone saying something smart against a video of a cat in a waistcoat falling off a chair. We all know the cat will win.
Instead, I’m interested in how podcast producers can build a following on social media for their work. I’m preoccupied with this because it’s part of my job at The Economist: finding more people to listen to, and subscribe to, our podcasts. My tool is social media, because I help run our editorial social team and I have a specific oversight of multimedia content including Economist Radio. We produce at least five podcasts per week, on topics as broad as politics, science and finance, often featuring hard-hitting interviews with characters like Tony Blair and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
I’d like to share a few of our experiments and our ideas here, and hear your thoughts on what we’re doing.
Putting the bite into soundbite
The format we’re most excited about now are the audiograms we’ve been making. I’ve been working with my colleague Jenni Reid to make what are essentially short video clips uploaded to Facebook. For example:
They’re not real videos; they are just a static image overwritten by a quote and with the related sound clip running underneath. We choose excerpts from our podcasts that work well enough alone, and cut them out of the episode. The photo has to be striking, either because it is beautiful or intriguing or features a notorious public figure (see above). The result is that the Facebook user sees something in their newsfeed that works on its own with or without sound. These audiograms are similar to Facebook’s audio player, which @sgraslie tested for NPR earlier this year. The results of NPR’s audiogram experiment are well worth reading if you’re into this sort of thing.
For a big share of our Facebook audience, these audiograms might be the first time they hear that we make podcasts. It’s probably the first time they’ve heard the voices of our editors and correspondents. For people who want to hear more, we include a link as a comment to point them to the full podcast, where they can subscribe or just stream. We’re not expecting these audiograms to go viral. Instead, their job is just to tell the world that we make audio and to introduce them to our voices. Some of the people who hear them will be podcast listeners, and so we hope they’ll then decide to tune in to ours.
The Economist is human—actually, a whole bunch of them
We send out tweets about every single podcast @TheEconomist and @EconomistRadio, to tell our followers about new episodes and tell them where they can subscribe. But really a tweet from @TheEconomist is pretty impersonal, and contrasts with what you get when you tune in to a podcast: the voices of actual people. The Economist newspaper and website are unusual for not publishing the names of authors alongside their articles. We can’t do that on the podcasts — and we wouldn’t want to. One thing I love about our podcasts is that they give the listener the chance to hear the voices of our correspondents and editors. You can hear our senior editor Anne McElvoy use her smooth voice to slice through politicians’ noise, or allow yourself to think you’re watching a movie trailer when really you’re hearing Jason Palmer’s deep tones explaining dark matter, or hang out with chilled-out-but-super-sharp John Prideaux as he dissects American politics.
These voices are the stars of our podcasts. So I’m encouraging our guests and hosts to carry them over into social media. Most of them already have a decent presence on Twitter. I’m just asking them to tweet more about their podcasts, to continue to be themselves, and to feel free to plug their Twitter names in the podcasts.
Breaking down the fourth wall
When I think about the podcasts I enjoy the most in my own time, it is those where I feel like I could contact the show or the presenter and interact. In fact, I do this from time to time, especially with Matt Baume’s fascinating Sewers of Paris and Mike Harding’s stomping folk show, broadcast from a shed in Yorkshire. I want to open up The Economist’s podcasts in the same way, so I’ve convinced producers to interact more with listeners. Kristen Taylor, who used to work on Serial, wrote an insightful piece on how she used Tumblr and other platforms to involve listeners in what has become the poster child for podcasts.
We haven’t yet done as much work on this as Taylor and Serial have, but recently we’ve asked Twitter followers for their input. For example, I asked them on Twitter what they want to know about the economics of Westeros to help us prepare for an interview with historian Carolyne Larrington. It was probably the smartest set of Twitter replies I’ve ever seen. Here are some of the best:
We scripted some of these replies into the podcast and they worked brilliantly. Thanks to all the excellent respondents!
Ultimately the way to build an audience for a podcast is not to pray that the content goes viral and reaches millions of people. It’s better to involve engaged audience members and then rely on them to tell others, through rating your podcast on iTunes and telling their friends. I can’t count how many times I’ve recommended Mike Harding’s Folk Show and the Sewers of Paris, but I think they definitely owe me an ice cream.
Adam Smith is deputy community editor at The Economist.
