Keys to a Successful Private Podcast Launch

Planning a strategic launch for your private podcast is a great opportunity to make the biggest splash possible with your employees and gain momentum towards your listenership and adoption goals. Although success looks different for everyone, and is dependent on the business goals you place, we’ve highlighted some best practices and aspects to keep in mind when it comes time to launch your podcast.

Communicate the Initiative

Leading up to your podcast launch, it is important to build excitement and let your audience know what new content they are about to have at their fingertips. We suggest sending a pre-launch teaser email, announcement email on the day of your podcast launch, and an email one week post-launch. You can find 3 example email templates on our website here.

Is sending an email before a podcast launch jumping the gun? We don’t think so. The pre-launch teaser is meant to generate buzz and let your audience know to be on the lookout for the announcement on launch day. It should highlight new content and the new way to access the content along with the date they can expect to get access.

In your communication you should also consider asking members to subscribe, explaining the benefits and notifying them of the release cadence. If they don’t receive straightforward communication about your new podcast, how can you expect them to listen?!

Just as you should communicate your new podcast initiative with your employees, you should make sure you leverage the influence of management as well. We suggest that our clients have pre-launch communications to leadership teams to get them onboard, explain the benefits podcasting will bring their teams, and ask for their partnership to encourage their teams to use the uStudio app.

Consider Your Launch Date

Although there is no “right time” to launch a podcast, it is possible that the date of your private podcast launch could help to generate a splash. Do you have another big announcement or product release coming out soon that would complement your podcast well? What about launching the day of your next all-hands meeting to again remind employees about the new medium?

PegaSystems launched their private podcast during their sales kick-off and held a dedicated kiosk at the event just for employees to receive podcast information. They also gave away a pair of Apple AirPods to one lucky employee who downloaded the uStudio application. During the kick-off, Pega leaders clearly communicated with employees why they were switching to private podcasting and what benefits the new medium would bring them

“[Our sales kick-off is] the one time of year where we get the global sales organization together and that’s when we pushed [our podcast] out. Capturing that energy was critical to increase adoption. We now have over 500 users and growing every day,” Tiffiny Fisher, in Sales Strategy and Transformation at PegaSystems said.

As a reminder, this new medium you are launching will fortunately be available for your employees 24/7. That means, they will ultimately listen when it is most convenient for them. As you start producing more and more content, you will be able to monitor your analytics and publish new content around your employee’s listening trends.

Make Sure Employees Have The Right Resources

In order for your employees to use your new application, you want to make sure they have the right resources to succeed. Our uStudio End User Guide explains how to use the uStudio desktop and mobile applications - including how to download and log in to the app, how to subscribe to shows, access playback controls and much more. We recommend passing this guide along to your customers before or during your launch so that they have a seamless experience when consuming your content.

We recommend that you have podcast content uploaded prior to your launch date so when your employees sign in for the first time they are able to instantly witness the medium’s benefits. This means, you should start planning your podcast content prior to launch. Lucky for you we have some great resources, including our Podcast Content Guide, to walk you through channel governance, planning multiple shows, potential hosts for your podcast, and more.

Utilize the News Show

The News Show is a feature unique to the uStudio platform and is a great place to publish new or important content. When a new piece of content is added to the News Show ALL users of the application will receive a push notification to their phone notifying them of the new episode. However, the user must have allowed push notifications on their app in order to receive the alert. If you want extra eyes on your new (or first) podcast episode, we recommend publishing it to the news section as well as its own show.

Start Building Your Community 

Building a community around your private podcast is also one of the best ways to form a loyal listener base that will come back to your content engaged week after week. Many of our customers like to give their community a platform, like a dedicated Slack channel, where employees can discuss podcast episodes, leave feedback and simply converse with other listeners. This is a great way to increase engagement with your content all while helping employees to feel supported and involved within the company. You can read more about building a podcast community in our blog post here.

Start Monitoring Analytics 

Analytics can tell you a ton about your private podcast - not only who listened, but how. The only way you can fully cater to your employees and provide them with targeted private podcast content that they will enjoy, is to truly understand them and their listening habits.

Named-user data can also help drive employee adoption within your podcast initiative. For companies who are authenticating podcast listeners through single sign-in (SSO), comparing the SSO attributes to the named-user metrics available in your dashboard, your organization can better understand login activity and track users who should be leveraging the tool. If there are members who should be utilizing the uStudio app post-launch but are not, it would be worthwhile to look into why, and contact their manager for feedback.

Feedback can also be qualitative, and asking employees who they would like to hear from on your podcast or what they think of the medium in general, is a great thing to do regularly. Many of our clients survey or involve employees prior to their podcast launch so that they can best serve their needs through podcasting.

It is important to understand that no company has the same launch experience. Thankfully, this medium is so popular in the consumer world that your employees are bound to enjoy it in the workplace, too. And with some preparation and the right uStudio resources, you’re already on the right foot for a successful private podcast launch.