Graphic designers can give your brand a fantastic updated look. Copywriters can give your brand tone and a story. But how can you give your company the human touch and a human voice? How about a company podcast?
How to Deliver an Emotional Connection
Human beings are emotional creatures, and no sense is better at evoking an emotional response than hearing.
Fingernails on a chalkboard make us cringe, while a favorite song can soothe, excite, or remind us of falling in love.
When you use a company podcast to add a human voice to your brand, you can forge a deeper emotional connection with your audience.
Podcasts Have Filled a Deep Void
Given the emotional impact of audio, it should come as no surprise that podcasts have boomed during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Spending more time at home and craving human contact, consumers have turned to podcasts in droves. Yet traditional businesses have been slow to capitalize on the trend.
Nearly one-third of Americans listen to podcasts on at least a monthly basis. If you can capture even just a sliver of that market — you’ll expand your consumer base significantly.
Even as more and more companies begin to set up rudimentary podcasts of their own — substantial room for improvement remains.
Look to upgrade your company’s podcast with the makeover it needs with these tips.
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Reduce background noise.
Let’s face it: most businesses just getting into the podcast game probably can’t afford the space and equipment they really need. The result is bad audio quality, choppy editing, and worst of all, harsh background noise.
Over the length of an entire podcast, too much background noise can make an audio file all but unlistenable. Consider how most podcast listeners are acclimated to high-quality recordings and work to adjust your own quality.
Thankfully, there are some tech fixes to eliminate this problem. Platforms such as Dolby.io’s Media Processing API can do most of the work for you.
By automatically identifying and reducing background noise on the spot, this process allows you to focus all of your energy on maximizing the quality of your podcast’s content.
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Improve accessibility.
You’ll want to attract the largest crowd of listeners possible — so, you’ll want to accommodate a large number of needs.
Chief among needs will be a transcription; not everyone can follow along with hours of aural content with no visual reference. Transcribing your podcasts gives your listeners a supplemental way of engaging with your material.
While you can always do the transcribing yourself, this process can be both difficult and time-consuming.
Machine learning-enabled platforms like Otter.ai or Verbit produce transcripts on the fly, allowing you to publish them alongside the podcast episodes themselves.
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Implement signposts and calls to action.
A podcast should be exciting, entertaining, and informative. Your business will want to provide a little something extra. The ultimate goal of a company podcast is to attract new customers and engage existing ones. The best way to accomplish this goal is to strategize, plan and implement your goals by taking tangible steps.
First, signpost the major moves of any given episode.
This means that you should let listeners know what you’re talking about, why you’re talking about it, and, most importantly, how it connects back to your business.
When you provide these signposts, you can be on the same page as your audience throughout the entirety of your podcast.
Equally important is the call to action.
Make it clear how podcast listeners can further strengthen their relationship with your business. Give them a newsletter to sign up for or even provide a link so that they can arrange a meeting with a sales representative.
Whatever route you opt for, just make sure that it’s clearly telegraphed to the listener.
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Optimize SEO.
Your podcast is only as good as your audience determines it to be. If you want your podcast to have a wide reach and lots of influence, you need to attract listeners who will genuinely engage with what you’re creating.
The answer here is search engine optimization — or SEO.
Optimizing the SEO of your podcast means that when people search for terms relevant to your podcast, your podcast is more likely to appear.
Maximizing the SEO for terms closely related to your content means that you’re far more likely to attract listeners who will appreciate what you have to say. This SEO guide from podcasting service Castos is a great place to start for the uninitiated.
Every podcast listener knows that the gap between the best and worst podcasts is immense. The more steps you take towards refining your podcast, the better the long-term results will be.
Image Credit: dziubi steenbergen; pexels
Deanna Ritchie
Managing Editor at ReadWrite
Deanna is the Managing Editor at ReadWrite. Previously she worked as the Editor in Chief for Startup Grind and has over 20+ years of experience in content management and content development.
