Podcast – Week 7 – Social Media

I believe this is the last week that I will be discussing the set-up of my podcast! We are almost at the fun part. However, first, we need to discuss the social media aspect of a podcast.

Advertising on social media is essential in this day and age. When I look up businesses, I turn to social media first and then their website page if I have further questions. So, it is only logical that I would create a social media account for my podcast.

Which platforms would I use? Well, considering my audience, I feel like I would start with Instagram and TikTok would be the most logical platforms to use. Instagram has an impressive reach amongst the age ranges that would be most likely to engage with my content. Not only this, but it would increase visibility and engagement with potential listeners. With an estimated 2 billion users, statistically, 60% of users are between the ages of 18-34, and 16% are 35-44. Of those users, surveys have discovered that 47% of users (Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube) watch podcasts through the short clips portion of their platform. Furthermore, Instagram users spend an average of 33 minutes per day on the app. If we examine TikTok’s statistics, we see that they have 1 billion users where 55% of their users discover new topics. These statistics alone allow us to see the importance of social media exposure.

With this in mind it is important to revisit the decision that I made weeks ago about including video in my podcast. To engage with a lot larger audience, I will need to include a video aspect in my podcast. Why do I need a video? So I am able to create Audiograms* and teasers to post on these social media accounts. Furthermore, because my podcast includes a lot of educational theory and terminology, I find it is useful to use visuals to help keep the audience engaged without becoming a dictionary.

With all of this information, it is important to know why social media analytics would be important. Instagram analytics not only show you how many accounts your content reached (whether they played it or not), if gives you the general information regarding those accounts. The information includes demographics of these users. Then, Instagram also has the “accounts engaged” and “interactions” analytics. These can be essential because you are getting immediate feedback on whether your content is interesting enough to engage with. The only drawback is that you do not know whether their engagement was initially positive or negative. Analyzing the data more allows for us to start making better inferences with the analytics.

We can’t forget about the most important part of social media accounts: the user’s experience. Using social media for promotion not only allows for podcasters to help promote their material, but it allows creators to reach out to their audiences and begin to build a community. The idea being that followers have influence in the material, can hold discussions on topics with like minded people, and explore new topics where the community can answer questions or misunderstanding they have. This community also allows for the creator to get a sense of what is interesting and popular with their community and whether they need to adapt or pivot (PIVOT!) the direction the podcast is going. I wouldn’t be limited to the use of TikTok or Instagram to create these communities. I could also create a community on a platform like Reddit – who has an estimated 1.1 billion visitors each month.

Finally, a lot of the advice columns for podcasters advocate to use blogs for further promotion. Some of the distribution platforms provide this option to their users. However, Substack is becoming more and more popular for blogs and newsletters. The exciting thing about this platform is you can choose whether you monetize your information or not. Not only this, but they have a podcast platform that is free to creators. While it seems to be inferior to the platforms I discussed last week, the difference is that it allows you to set a subscription price for your listeners, and you get to keep an estimated 90% of those payments.

 

Alright, this was the last of the set up information about my podcast. Next week, look for a run down of a short introduction podcast!