Podcasting adoption continues to steadily grow. 57% of Americans have consumed a podcast, with more than 80 million considering themselves weekly listeners. That growth indicates a consumer desire to take in content in new ways, and it can be a boon for your company’s internal comms program.

More businesses are turning to internal podcasting to train employees, share company updates, and maintain ongoing education. So, if you’re ready to hop into creating an enterprise podcast, it’s just a matter of hitting record and talking, right?

Well…not quite. To have an effective program, keep these six podcasting tips in mind.

Think about the podcasting team

You’ll quickly learn trying to have one person manage the podcast on their own will cause this internal comms initiative to fall apart. Creating an internal podcast requires people working together and owning their areas of responsibility.

Here are four stakeholders to consider:

• Executive sponsors: Executive Directors and C-suite enabling the show to happen. They’ll focus on ROI and determining the show’s success.
• Content strategists: These roles will handle programming, publishing, and analyzing content. They’ll focus on delivering the correct message at a consistent time and increasing engagement.
• Producers and creative team: These roles include your podcast hosts and audio or video producers. They’ll focus on creating quality content and receiving feedback from listeners.
• Audience: These are your listeners – they deserve to be part of your team! From employees to partners to customers, a podcast should be worth their time, so encourage them to tune in, comment, and participate.

Don’t forget about what matters to each stakeholder and incorporate it into your business objectives. An executive sponsor like a CEO may have a goal of getting 80% of employees to listen to new episodes. Meanwhile, an audience member like an employee may want to learn a new skill or get exposed to new ideas from different departments.

Create a programming plan

Think about a favorite piece of media, whether a TV show, newsletter, or podcast. Successful shows have excellent storylines and a cohesive plot with recurring segments that keep viewers tuning in.

Your enterprise podcast shouldn’t be any different. Developing a programming plan before you get started will set you up for success — and it should be ongoing as your show continues to evolve. Consider what you want your show to convey and the best route for sharing that message. Are you featuring interviews with guest experts, either internally or externally?

An editorial content calendar and promotional plan are great tools to develop and track your episodes. Easily monitor episode names, guests, release dates, and descriptions or themes for each episode. Include a link to the podcast—easy to do in the uStudio app—for quick sharing. When a new employee comes onboard, direct them to the most recent episodes and they can get caught up.

If you’re managing multiple shows under your company umbrella, use creative briefs for each one. This will help you determine important elements like the show’s name, target audience, key messages, publishing frequency, talent requirements, details about format, style, and tone, and more.

Keep promotion ongoing

While you should certainly hype up the show before it launches, promotion shouldn’t end there. Rather, your podcast is an ongoing machine, with interactive components between you and listeners. You want employers to keep coming back for more episodes.

Check out some examples you can try:

• Incorporate your colleagues: If an employee is featured in an episode, they’ll want to share it! Include a question from them in a Q&A segment, ask them to introduce the episode, or, if they’re musically inclined, invite them to create a theme song for the intro or outro.
• Brand the office; Name conference rooms after your shows and include key episode quotes on monitors around the office. Still working remotely? Name your Zoom rooms or Teams names after your show or episode names.
• Gamify listening: People love a little healthy competition, so incorporate that into your podcast. Perhaps the first few people who listen earn a gift card or tickets to a ballgame, or you can hide an Easter egg takeaway within each episode for people to share and earn points or prizes.

Here are a few other tips of podcasting advice for improving the rate of program adoption.

Build a production process

As you’re creating a new show, design a workflow to ensure listeners get the full experience of listening. It’ll help your internal comms program thrive.

Create a checklist for your podcast production. Are you following the same process for pre-production (booking guests, planning episode topics, purchasing equipment if needed), production (setup and recording), and post-production (editing and planning promotion)?

Developing a consistent workflow will not only shorten down your production time, but it will also allow other people to step in as needed. Don’t miss an episode because you were out sick or on vacation; having a process in place can keep things running smoothly.

Look at your publishing data

Your show name, audience access, and show graphics will likely remain the same each episode. However, other episodes will have components that change each time. Your file and episode name will be unique, as will tags, links, and other metadata.

You may also decide to archive old episodes, which helps from a discovery perspective. If the data shows listeners aren’t engaging with an episode from months ago, keep it handy for new hires but otherwise remove it from the list of episodes so your employees aren’t overwhelmed.

Monitor your performance

Here’s a truth for any podcast: your first episode will likely be your worst one. You’re still figuring out what works best, and you don’t have nearly as much data or audience feedback to work with.

That’s okay — if you’re learning with each passing episode.

During your initial planning stages, you ideally outlined business objectives. Maybe you’re looking to increase revenue or productivity, or reduce costs associated with employee churn. You could be more focused on building company culture and increasing diversity and inclusion scores and confidence across team members.

Those objectives will help you monitor the performance of your podcast. And you can dig even deeper into specific episodes through a podcast analytics dashboard.

With uStudio, it’s simply a matter of looking at each episode in the app. You can see key information like when people are listening and how far into the episode they’re getting, then apply that to future episodes.

For example, if you’re creating episodes that are 30 minutes long but find most people are dropping off about 15 minutes in, that could be a sign that shorter episodes will resonate more. It could also mean the second half of the show’s topics aren’t as interesting to your audience.

Once you’re armed with the proper data, you can take on the world with your enterprise podcast! Or, at the very least, with your employee communication. And that’s just as impressive.