Podcast Creation
About The Project
The Communications Group recently implemented a public relations campaign to strengthen its brand recognition among agriculture industry stakeholders. The campaign, Women in Industry or WIN for short, is primarily social media based, highlights the achievements of female leaders in the agriculture community chosen through an open nomination process, and serves as a catalyst to acquaint influential members of the agriculture business community to The Communications Group. Initially, the WIN program promoted nominees in a long-form narrative drafted from a questionnaire completed by the nominee.
However, the WIN program’s success stirred interest in ComGroup’s leadership to expand and enhance the WIN program while maintaining the WIN program’s established model that required little to no investment of resources.
An initial investigation was conducted to explore the most effective options at our disposal to help enhance the WIN program. This investigation included a mix of informal primary and secondary research. Our research quickly steered us to podcasting as an inexpensive and viable option that fit the WIN program’s appeal.
Extensive additional research was conducted to understand podcast production best practices, the tools, and equipment needed, vetting recording spaces as well as necessary recording and publishing platforms and software.
Planning
Based on the findings of our research, we decided to develop a companion podcast for the WIN program to provide the women we featured an opportunity to share their stories in their own voices. Our primary goal was to measurably enhance the awareness and interest in the WIN program. Next, we defined our primary audience for this campaign, which targeted professional women between the ages of 25 and 50 serving in a professional role within the agricultural community. The following SMART objectives were defined to support our primary goal:
- Produce a minimum of 1 episode per month for 12 months.
- Earn 500 podcast episode downloads in the next 12 months.
Implementation
Implementation of the WIN podcast plan began with setting up WIN podcast accounts on popular podcast hosting sites including Apple and Spotify. Once these accounts were established, we integrated them into our company website to promote and enhance their accessibility for users.
We developed a show format and scripts for intros/outros and transitions. We also produced pre-recorded commercial spots promoting our agency’s PR, marketing, and podcasting services. We designated one producer to manage the production of the podcast, creating templates to guide the process of booking guests, conducting pre-interviews to help the hosts with show prep and troubleshoot any technical difficulties prior to the recording session, and a list of tips for guests to help to make the recording process as easy as possible. The producer also facilitated the development of show notes and social media copy to promote each podcast episode.
The second producer was tasked with engineering the audio of the podcast and executing its digital components. Once the audio was edited in post-production, the second producer uploads it to our hosting platforms.
To promote the WIN podcast, each guest has a digital profile that is permanently added to our company website to showcase our growing community of podcast guests. Guests’ WIN podcasts are linked in their profile and promoted each Friday via ComGroup’s social media where followers are also greeted with a call to action to listen.
To amplify our reach even further, a news release is prepared by our PR specialist announcing each guest’s appearance on the WIN podcast and distributed to targeted outlets tied to the guest’s personal and professional communities. Recipients of the release can follow links to the guest’s WIN podcast, or the entire episode catalog.
After their podcast airs, each guest receives a follow-up email with links to everywhere their episode appears digitally and is encouraged to share them on their own social channels.
In the final step of this process, the producer makes a $100 donation to a charitable organization supported by the guest to demonstrate our appreciation for their time.
THE FINAL
Result
Since the WIN podcast’s launch, it has exceeded our original objectives, producing on average one WIN podcast episode per week. The WIN page of the ComGroup website became the number one most visited page on the site and the WIN podcast accumulated more than 900 downloads in the first 12 months. Listen to the WIN podcast here.
.png?width=1080&height=1080&name=CG%20Email%20Template%20(3).png "CG Email Template (3)")