How to make the branded podcast actually work for the brand?

When you develop and promote a product and want to make it a love brand for the audience, you use all available tools or at least find the most workable and potentially suitable for your particular area. Social media and podcast platforms look promising for all directions and all products, especially for content platforms.

​​Content platforms provide content for users; content is always a topic to talk about, so brands talk through Facebook, TikTok or podcast episodes about content and interaction with it. Often, they reach an audience for such conversations. But here, the platforms face a challenge: they find the audience on a social media platform or see that their podcast is listened to on Spotify by a significant number of people, but what should they do with all of them? How do transfer them to the main brand? These people are here to perceive such content as podcasts; all podcasts are already gathered here for them.

Also, brands can face an even weirder situation: their customers use the main platform but quit going to Spotify or Apple Podcasts to listen to a new episode. So, their loyalty is wasted on increasing other platforms’ metrics.

Why? 

Of the 1.3 million podcasts Pacific Content analysed, about 850,000 of them had no ratings. According to a CoHost report, B2C branded podcasts can be top-rated but don’t perform well.The most popular formats for branded podcasts are interview, discussion, or hybrid format, which are around 60-65%. The average length is 20-30 minutes.

We see the solution in internal audio streams that don’t refuse the idea of podcast platforms but develop it and move it to the next level.

Let’s look at potential mechanics for two options: if you already have a podcast or if you just think about it.

1.You have a podcast

If you are producing a podcast and its audiences look forward to new episodes, they for sure will be interested in participating in the open recording of an episode: that means listeners can join the recording, ask questions in real-time, and then, if they missed this open-record event they can listen to a regular version afterwards. Usually, these open-record events are provided offline, and because of that, it causes enormous costs and little value. However, there is a possibility to deliver it on your platform online.

Invite users who like your platform and listeners who love your podcast to the open record online event. All guests and listeners must be authorised on your platform to participate. They listen to the audio event in real time, comment on it, ask questions and get answers at once. So, that provides live communication between the brand and users and allows them to create discussions together. Thus, you as a brand get an advantage as time spent on the platform, a high level of user engagement and interaction and unique content that is produced directly on your platform. Then you can just keep spreading the record to all podcast platforms as a regular episode, but it gave you profit already — during the recording. And you can produce all episodes like that. Also, you can provide special audio meetings on the platform with special guests weekly or monthly and send them to the podcast platforms, not all episodes. So, listeners who become fans of your show should go to your main platform to have access to all episodes and participate in them more actively and intensely.

2.You don’t have a podcast yet but plan to start

Podcasts are great but a tricky tool. We all know excellent examples of podcasts. However, millions of podcasts are just drawing on audio platforms. According to reports, over 60% of branded podcasts have no rates or reviews. You can answer that there is the same situation with social media, but they are not perfectly the same because, on social media, you can promote your page and promote each post to reach an audience and engage it. You can do it at the start to attract first users and then to grow your base and interest due to high-quality content; you can promote posts occasionally to feed your subscription base or promote them permanently to be sure that your content always gets enough attention. You cannot do such a thing with podcasts because only external promotion tools exist for them. So, you should produce outstanding content, hope to reach the audience organically, and just wait if it gives you any profit. Often, brands run podcasts and have no idea what to do with them or how to get value for spent resources. Integrated tools for audio events allow starting with the value.

You can produce the recording of the podcast on your platform. It’s natural if the main topic of it is connected with the content you provide on a platform or with the user experience or any other area of consumption. Then, you can use this record on the podcast platforms as a regular episode. The difference will be that some of your users already participated in creating this episode, sending you questions and comments.

After listening to this episode on regular platforms, when Spotify or Apple podcast users would like to communicate with hosts or guests, they will be able to do it easily by joining the record of the next episode. 

So far, it can look really challenging: How do you produce podcast content on video, betting, trading, or educational platforms? But there are no challenges at all in this. You can add an easy-integrated community chat with audio to the platform.

How does it work?

You choose a space for such an activity on your platform, website and app. Where will the button be located? Where will your users check the schedule of audio streams? Where will you gather recorded episodes? There are answers you should answer before the integration (It’s only about the product and UX side, but of course, you should think about the content, too).

When you locate all the elements and ensure they work for your users, you can inform them about the opportunity to talk and participate in such an event. Users participate in the event simultaneously and listen to the stream, asking questions and commenting on a chat. You also can allow users to say something. Participating users listen to the stream directly on your platform. You can provide votes, polls, quizzes or other activities in a chat. Users also can communicate with each other. So, it is a direct way to stay with them in a strong connection, to transfer brand values or just news and make this format work for your metrics and the growth of your business.

What else?

• Invite influencers, and they will lead their audience to your platform
• Provide competitions and stimulate users to be even closer to the brand
• Make these streams regular and build the users’ habit of joining them



Do you want to learn more or have any ideas on how to create content on the perimeter of your content platform and need some help to implement it? Please fill out the form below and meet with us.