Building an engaged audience for your private podcast is important to ensure listeners are consuming your business content and come back to listen to your podcasts time after time. Check out our best practices below for building an engaged audience.
How to Build an Engaged Audience for Your Private Podcast
Initiate regular promotion of your podcast program.
It’s important to continually promote your podcast content, even after a successful program launch. Especially if you want to work towards habitual or returning listeners, regular promotion will help to build more end users over time. Monthly all-hands meetings, slack channels or internal newsletters can be great events to dedicate time or space towards private podcast updates. If you’re worried about keeping track of your promotional efforts, a promotional calendar is a tool that can help ensure all content is getting equal attention. You can read about more creative ways to promote your podcast in our blog post.
Give your podcast audience a platform to communicate.
The more your listeners talk to one another about your private podcast content, the more engaged they will be with each episode. Dedicated platforms such as social media pages, chat rooms, or even ice-breakers during meetings can be a great place for your employees to engage with one another. These types of conversations can help to keep your employees excited about the content that is being published as well as provide feedback that can help to improve your overall program.
Foster relationships with your private podcast hosts.
If you feel a connection with someone who is speaking to you, it is more likely you will be engaged and interested in what they are saying. That’s why, depending on the format of your show, it’s important to have one or more regular individuals hosting your private podcast episodes. Someone with an engaging personality can help to make even the driest corporate learnings more interesting to your employees.
Monitor your private podcast analytics.
uStudio gives you access to private podcast analytics for a reason! To truly give your listeners the content they’d like to hear, you need to understand their preferences and listening habits. What topics do they engage with the most? What episode length is considered too long? Are they consuming content more on their mobile devices or their desktop? Just because you’ve observed a behavior once, doesn’t mean it’s a forever trend. Note that employee habits can change as your program continues to grow.
Make sure your podcast audience is trained on your podcast platform.
You can’t expect your audience to stay engaged and listen to your content if they don’t know how to navigate your platform. Especially when it comes time to launch your private podcast program, be sure to share educational resources, like uStudio’s end user guide so they can get the most benefit from your communications.
Have a consistent release cadence.
Think about your favorite consumer podcast – you’re pretty bummed when you’re expecting a new episode and it’s late to be released, right? By following a strict and consistent release cadence, you will set listener expectations for when they can expect new content. Your employees will be more likely to tune in and listen when they have a timeline in mind. It’s also a great idea to tease future episodes in your podcast content to get your workers excited of what’s to come. Remember, a lack in new content can lead to listener abandonment, so it’s best to have a few private podcast episodes in the queue at all times.
Encourage listeners to use interactive features within the podcast platform.
Many private podcast platforms offer quality user experience with interactive features such as the ability to like, share or download a podcast episode. Encouraging your employees to take advantage of these actions should help to get more eyes on your content. Monitoring the usage of these features can also give you additional insight into which podcast topics or hosts or getting the most engagement. Adjusting your content based on these trends should again help to improve private podcast engagement and success overall.
Incorporate your employees.
Ask your workers what they want to hear about on your private podcast show and invite them to offer constructive criticism. The more that listeners feel that their opinion is valued, the more likely they are to feel that it’s “their” show. Employees also can be great guest hosts in relevant episodes. In some cases, employees can provide relevant subject-matter expertise. In others, they may be on to discuss lighter workplace subjects. In either case, getting a variety of employees involved helps to make the podcast feel more accessible and community-oriented.
For the next step of our Guide to Private Podcasting, read about Private Podcast Use Cases. Or, if you’re ready to learn more about the industry-leading private podcast platform for the enterprise, request a free, personalized demo of uStudio today.