The popularity of Podcasting is on the rise.  According to Ofcom research in September 2019 just over 7 million podcasts are listened to every week in the UK, which is an increase of 24% from the previous year.

Why are podcasts becoming so popular? Because they easily fit in to life on the go. You can listen in the car, when out jogging, and while grabbing a bite to eat.

 

Why make a podcast?

We’ve explored the rise of voice searches in a previous blog post. Podcasting is an audio source ready and waiting to be picked up by all those search queries.

The top podcasting genres are music and TV & film but news, tech and business is also high. Popular podcast subjects being searched for on Quora.com  include how to grow a business, entrepreneurship, start-ups, and property investment.

Although podcasting is on the rise it is still a small content market compared to blogging and Youtube therefore it has niche audiences who tend to be more engaged. Now is an opportunity to create high quality niche content before low quality mass market subjects flood in, allowing you a chance to build authority.

 

What do you need to start podcasting?

You don’t need much equipment:  a computer, a USB microphone and recording /editing software. Audacity is available as a free digital audio editor.  Consider where you do your recording though as your sound quality needs to be good.

Once the recording is in the bag and edited to perfection it’s time to send your piece out into the World Wide Web.  You need to upload to a hosting platform, there are quite a few to choose from but Soundcloud and Buzzsprout offer free options. You can host on your own website, with WordPress being a popular choice, but it will require a lot of space and could cause problems if not.

You will want to use a streaming service to make it easy for a large amount of listeners to find you. Knowing your audience will help guide your decisions as to which one.  The Ofcom research revealed the most popular platform for 18-54 year olds to listen to podcasts is YouTube.  Spotify is more popular with 12-24 year olds.

 

How do you make your podcast?

Again you will also need to understand who your audience is in order to decide on a style of podcast.  Interviews are the most common format, or it can just be you commentating as an expert, a panel show (this offers the chance to appear as a guest podcaster), or a non-fiction narrative (currently this format is most often used in journalism).

You will want to sound natural and conversational so don’t have a fully scripted piece that is obvious you are reading. Just have a few bullet points you want to cover. Shorter length podcasts of between 5 to 10 minutes are becoming popular although the majority run between 20 to 45 minutes.

You can add in adverts too as research is suggesting that listeners are more tolerant of adverts in the podcast format because they understand that the advertisement is what is paying for the content.

 

Looking forward to hearing from you!

If you already run a business podcast we’d love to hear it. Leave us a link in the comments below.

 

This entry was tagged: marketing