Leveraging podcasts to enhance MobiSpaces community engagement
New communication formats are constantly evolving in the current digital marketing landscape. Podcasts are more and more present in many communication plans. Their importance has been highlighted by Google’s 2019 announcement on the integration of podcasts into search results, by then their significance has increased even further. Therefore, the impact of podcasts on consumer behaviour cannot be underestimated.
According to a recent 2022 survey, over 62 percent of consumers above the age of 12 in the US have listened to at least one podcast. Moreover, research from the Pew Research Center in 2023 revealed that 28 percent of podcast listeners have made purchases based on products or services advertised on podcasts. These statistics underscore the role of podcasts in augmenting brand awareness.
An additional benefit of podcasting is represented by easily accessible editing software. Thanks to free tools and platforms like Zoom, producing high-quality podcasts has become very simple. Podcasts serve as an effective medium for keeping communities engaged and informed about key topics. They can be seamlessly integrated into newsletters, thereby enhancing click-through rates and enriching content delivery.
Unlike webinars, podcasts offer a more intimate and focused exploration of topics, often requiring only one expert to delve deeply into the subject matter. Moreover, the versatility of podcast distribution channels, including social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn, newsletters, YouTube Shorts and websites provides ample opportunities for reaching diverse audiences and maximising content visibility.
Plan, Record, Refine: Essential Steps for Podcast Success
To ensure the success of a podcast episode, several essential steps must be followed.
- Firstly, thorough research into guests, topics, and objectives is imperative.
- Pre-planning meetings with guests to outline the podcast structure and draft questions facilitate smooth recording sessions. Flexibility is key, as outlines may evolve during discussions.
- Adequate recording time for a podcast episode varies depending on the length of the episode, but typically ranges from one to one-and-a-half hours. This duration allows for comprehensive coverage of topics.
- Maintaining high-quality sound recording is essential for ensuring listener engagement.
- Offering guests the opportunity to re-record answers and refining the podcast during editing further enhances its overall quality.
- The editing process, which typically takes three times longer than recording, involves selecting appropriate music, crafting promotional snippets for social media and newsletters, and incorporating guest feedback for final revisions.
MobiSpaces Podcast
In MobiSpaces, a Horizon Europe Research & Innovation Project, we produced a podcast with the intention to show the achievements of this consortium. In particular, the project aims to deliver an end-to-end mobility-aware and mobility-optimised data governance platform. This platform utilises AI-based mobility analytics to optimise the entire data path and enhance efficiency.
The podcast episodes we have produced dive deeper into the work produced by the project’s use cases and the development of the Mobility-aware Large-scale Decentralised Analytics platform.