8 minute read
TSPRA VOICE
Used effectively in conjunction with other established
strategies, podcasts can be very effective for school districts.
What’s this podcasting stuff, anyway?
By Erin McCann
As educators, we love a good buzzword. You’ve probably heard the term “podcast” thrown around. The world stood still in 2014 when Sarah Koenig, former producer for “This American Life,” launched “Serial,” an investigative journalism podcast questioning the possible wrongful conviction of Adnan Syed in Baltimore, Maryland. Overnight, thousands of people began exploring the realm of podcasting.
The unexpected COVID-19 pandemic and the aftershocks and implications of distance learning in districts across Texas are still being felt today, and public schools are reassessing the best ways to teach and reach our constituents. Having innovative methods of reaching our audiences and connecting our citizens with our messages has never been more important.
Podcasting, better described as audio content on-demand, has been around for years. Podcasts were actually invented in 2004 by two former MTV VJ’s who wanted to find a way to download internet-based radio broadcasts to their early edition iPods. Since that time, podcasts have grown tremendously in both content and production quality. It’s an enormous virtual space, and relatively inexpensive to produce. Truly, if you dream it, you can do it.
The education sphere has really started connecting with the idea of podcasting in the last five years. In that time, audio content has grown exponentially, and it is rational to consider whether or not this is a logical vehicle for your district, and for your community. Heads up — podcasts don’t work for everyone.
Why do you want to start a podcast?
When someone starts to question if they should start a podcast, there are a few questions they should ask themselves. “Why do you want to? Do you think it’s cool? Has your superintendent noticed his or her peers podcasting, and think that they are missing an opportunity? Does it align to a strategic goal or priority?”
None of those reasons are wrong, but it’s important to begin with the end in mind and know exactly why you are starting down this path.
Podcasts can be done at a very high production value, spending tons of time and money in sound engineering, or they can be produced very simply from just an app on your phone. Knowing the ultimate goal of your podcast can help you in the research stage to evaluate how much money, if any, you should invest in this venture.
Many School PR practitioners are obsessed with making decisions strategically. If you don’t set and measure goals, you’ll never know if the countless hours you spend on your podcast will give you a yield that makes the effort worthwhile, or if you have just been shouting into the abyss, praying someone is listening.
A great place to start is by knowing your school community and the constituents that you serve. Honestly, not everyone needs a podcast. Maybe your community is more rural and works locally. In that particular case, a podcast might not be worth your energy. With audio on-demand, it’s quite common for podcasts to be playing in the car on a commute in lieu of music. Some people listen at the gym, on a walk, or while doing housework and other chores. Knowing your community, their habits, their feelings on the school district, and how they spend their time will prime you to make decisions about putting energy into another vehicle for communication.
Planning
This might be one of, if not the, most important steps in strategic public relations. Preparing for a new communication strategy can be intimidating, but it’s vital for success. Start with your end goal. How will you know if your podcast is a success? How many people are you trying to reach? At what frequency? Why does it matter?
According to podcastinghost.org, a research site with podcast statistics, the average podcast listener downloads at least seven shows per week. They are absorbing this content constantly, and 93% of subscribed listeners download and listen to each episode of their favorite shows.
In podcasting, as in all communication, consistency is key. It takes time and strategy to build an audience, and listeners can be fickle. If you do anything to drive them away, you’ll never get them back. A key strategy in dropping audio content is to promise your audience when they can expect to receive an episode and always deliver on that promise. If you tell your listeners that they can expect a new episode every other Tuesday, and they subscribe, but then you don’t upload content, you may very well lose that listener for good. You always have the capability to drop additional content into your feed later, just don’t deliver less than promised.
Erin McCann hosts an online podcast.
The planning stage is also where you create your initial investment. Audio equipment can be extremely costly, and there are some fantastic tools out there. Determine your budget in relation to your measurement of success. If you’re measuring success at 50 downloads per episode, you probably don’t want to spend $2,000 on expensive equipment, abandon the project after a month or two, and let your new microphones and mixer gather dust in a corner somewhere. In contrast, if you live in a commuter-heavy community with 60,000 students and are expecting 500 downloads per episode, you probably don’t want to use the voice recorder feature on your phone and upload the audio unproduced.
You can certainly strike a balance. The trend in video and audio right now is less heavily produced material, and rawer, more authentic audio and video. A video quickly produced on Facebook can go viral just as easily as a more professionally crafted video that takes weeks to produce. The nice part about this is that it allows podcasters to clean up interviews and sound bytes, rather than spend endless hours producing and audio engineering a 20-30-minute episode.
Research shows us that the sweet spot for a podcast episode is 20-30 minutes, approximately the time it takes for an average commute. This is intentional. If you have a captive audience on a drive in to work, but can’t wrap up your messaging, it’s unlikely that they’re going to switch you back on at the end of the day after eight or so hours have passed, and still be connected to your information. If your episodes consistently run too long, your listeners will begin to deprioritize your podcast, and eventually, will likely unsubscribe.
Erin McCann records an interview for a podcast.
Implementation
For many this is the hardest part. Once you press publish, congratulations, you are officially a podcaster. Now you can sit back and let your work speak for itself.
There are a lot of tools available to amateur podcasters for free, or very inexpensively. One thing you absolutely need is a hosting site. Some districts are starting to host their podcasts on their own websites, and this works well. Personally, I’ve always been a fan of third-party sites that will produce an RSS feed for you and distribute your podcast to all the places that we commonly hear people get their audio content from (such as iTunes or Google Play). I’ve hosted on several different sites. My current projects are all hosted through anchor.fm, a totally free site that also has an app for your phone. This is a great place to experiment in podcasting for very little investment, while you decide if this is, or is not, a strategy that you want to continue putting energy toward.
Promotion is another key part of implementation. No matter how great your audio content is, if you don’t have a solid plan for promoting and cross-promoting your material, your audiences will not find it.
Evaluation
Education is data driven. In everything from state academics to UIL competitions and school finance, we rely on numbers and data to inform the success of our initiatives. Communications are no different. If we aren’t measuring the success of a strategy, do we even know if it was successful? How do we decide that we want to continue (or discontinue) this work? It’s highly suggested that you measure, both formally and informally, your podcast episodes. On average, how many downloads are you seeing in a 30-day period? What content is your audience really connecting with? (Hint: Storytelling-based podcasts, rather than pure information, are very on-trend right now). Do you have the capacity to receive feedback from your community?
Most podcast hosting sites give you downloads and metrics. This is great for measuring engagement and content. It’s also a good idea that you incorporate podcast-related questions in any annual surveys or other focus groups you may use to measure your communications successes.
Informal measurement is also incredibly helpful. Do you find your audiences mentioning your podcast in conversation? Is it the topic of discussion in any community Facebook groups? Maybe you released some information in a podcast episode, and it became the topic of discussion elsewhere, and so you know that your information is being communicated.
Is a podcast a good tool for me?
Used effectively in conjunction with other established strategies, podcasts can be very effective for school districts. Today, more than ever, parents want to know with full transparency the workings of their local public schools. By providing additional channels and means of receiving that information, we, as school administrators, can continue to build and foster the relationships with parents that we strongly value. n
