No matter how long your internal podcast has been around, your audience is always changing. Some percentage of your workforce is coming and going, content habits and tastes change, and new teams are emerging all the time.

Maintaining 100% consistent audience engagement may be unrealistic, but showing a healthy trend of adding new users and growing your returning users is a key indicator of a healthy podcast program.

Above all, consistent and regular content publishing is key. It’s no secret that for any podcast - private or public - audience growth is proportionately related to content publishing.

Outside of content itself, there are plenty of promotional tactics you can employ to boost your audience count. Here are six surefire practices that will boost the growth of your company podcast.

 

1. Use Share Links and Promotional Embeds

Your audience frequents other applications in their daily work, such as your CRM, LMS, intranet, or Salesforce. Meet them in the applications they use daily in their work with promotional embeds that will catch their attention and drive them to your podcast.

Promotional embeds and share links in uStudio allow podcast administrators to promote podcast episodes with a visually appealing preview of each episode.

Clicking anywhere on the promotional embed will take your audience to the mobile or web app, depending on the device they’re using when they click. To direct people to the mobile app specifically, try converting your share link into a QR code.

Need help making a QR code for your podcast? Check out our article on how to make your own links and QR codes.

If you are planning a meeting and attendees would be benefitted by listening to a specific podcast ahead of time, include the link in the meeting invitation. Your participants will show up ready to problem solve and get the job done.

Placing a share link in the calendar invite for a meeting can hold listeners accountable and encourage them to create a uStudio account if they haven’t already.

 

2. Hold “Podcast Clubs” for Podcast Episodes

Just like a traditional “book club,” with a “podcast club” your leadership teams can host follow-up discussions on podcast episodes before or after a team huddle.

Discussion with peers and co-workers will drive engagement with the episode content and also provide inspiration and accountability to employees to implement ideas from the podcast content. It’s also a good way to get employee feedback, especially about how they feel about the podcast.

Encourage employees to discuss what they learned from a particular episode: what they liked or disliked, or what follow-up questions they might have about the topic.

 

3. Promote Your Podcast in Your New Hire Onboarding Materials

The best way to create a lifetime listener is to promote your podcast to new employees at the start of their tenure. When they see how important the podcast is to company culture, they’ll get on board with the podcast program.

Making uStudio a critical tool in the onboarding process will get new hires familiar with the tool early on and return as new episodes are published. Include uStudio information in your new hire onboarding materials to instruct new employees on how to download and use the podcast application.

 

4. Create a Promotional Trailer

Just like a movie trailer, a podcast promotional trailer is a great way to give your employees a sneak peak of a new podcast show or episode, and to get employees excited about the new medium.

After you've produced your trailer, promote it in as many places as you can. This can include email, internal social media groups, slack channels and more.

Pro tip: consider slicing up your favorite moments from podcast episodes and editing them together with your theme music.

 

5. Consider a Last-minute Surprise

If you hold regular webinars for your employees, you might want to do what CCC Information Services did for a COVID-19 leadership webinar.

As the webinar date approached, CCC decided to upload the webinar content to uStudio. They told their employees that if they wanted to listen to important COVID-19 leadership information, they had to log in to uStudio and listen to the content as a podcast episode.

This one event was instrumental to CCC’s early adoption success.

Also, if you want to gain more podcast listeners, make sure your content is unique. Give your employees a compelling reason to listen to your podcast.

Consider hosting an interview with an interesting personality your employees have never heard from before. Or create an episode on a sensitive topic you know will attract attention.

 

6. Establish a Regular Promotional Cadence

Just because you’ve launched doesn’t mean you stop promoting the podcast. Regular promotion is essential to keep growing your internal audience.

A promotional calendar can help you organize your promotional efforts so you’re regularly keeping episodes in front of employees. To help get you started, we have created a promotional calendar workflow template for you to use.

With a little creativity, dedication and consistency you can start to see your podcast audience numbers grow pretty quickly.

For best results, make sure to track and measure your podcast usage with enterprise-grade podcast analytics for actionable insights.

What promotional tactics do you use at your company? If you have a unique promotional strategy that’s seen great results, let us know in the comments below, or drop us an email!