3 reasons why every company should have a podcast
Over the last year, podcast listening has gone up significantly. More people have been launching podcasts and more people are now listening to podcasts. This trend can be attributed to a bunch of factors — spending more time at home, AirPods and smart speakers, screen fatigue, etc. I’ve heard a lot of people say “Oh my god, another podcast”, but if you actually compare the numbers — there are roughly 1.8M podcast against 31M YouTube channels. So there’s a long way for podcasts.
We’ve all seen the recent growth of Clubhouse, which further points to the rise of audio and it’s important that companies pay attention to this trend and start working on an audio strategy, with podcasts being the lowest hanging fruit.
I’ll first talk about parts of the business where companies can leverage audio and then deep dive into why audio is a superior format for these use cases.
3 areas where a podcast can help a company
- Internal communication
- Attracting Talent
- Building thought leadership
📢 Internal Communication (Strategy and Operations)
It’s unlikely that we’re all going back to the office in the same way as we’re used to. The pandemic has ushered in a new way in how we work, with many companies including Spotify announcing that employees can work from anywhere post pandemic. It’ll be even more important for companies to ensure this distributed workforce is in sync and up to speed with what’s happening across the organization and an internal podcast can play a big role in solving this. Companies will also have to find ways to compensate for the lack of in-person communication while balancing zoom and slack and fatigue. Audio-only could be the answer!
😎 Attracting Talent (HR)
One of the good outcomes of work from anywhere is that you can now attract global talent. I’ve lived in Singapore for a few years now and despite being an expensive city, it still made a lot of sense for companies to set up here because you could attract world-class talent. But post-pandemic, you can do that from anywhere. But it’s not going to be easy. The fact that you can now attract talent from anywhere, also means that you’re competing with more companies for the same talent. Companies will have to invest more to build their brands online and across channels. Audio could play a key role given that it’s a less crowded space as compared to text and video, and has the ability to create a more authentic and personal experience for the listener. Since its early days, first movers will reap disproportionate benefits.
🧑🏽🎓Thought Leadership (Marketing)
Another good outcome from the pandemic and the travel restriction which came with it is the fact that people are now (more) comfortable doing business online without having to meet each other. So now you can sell your product and service without having to leave your home. This might sound great but like the earlier point, it also means that you’re now competing with companies across the world. Companies will have to focus on being really good in a niche, especially if they are selling software, and invest a lot at becoming a thought leader and the go-to provider for that. Here too, audio — via podcasts and platforms like Clubhouse — can play a key role.
3 reason why companies should pick audio
Now that we’ve discussed the areas where companies might benefit from podcasts, here are 3 reasons why audio is a superior format.
- Active and Passive Modes
- Asynchronous
- Cheap
🎧 Active and Passive Mode
The great thing about audio is that you can listen to it in 2 modes — active and passive. Active is when you’re paying attention to content — say when you’re listening to a podcast and making notes. Passive is when it’s playing in the background — like listening to a podcast while in the gym. You can’t do this with video or text, which require you’re full attention when consuming, and this feature of audio makes the medium very versatile and adaptable for many use cases.
🐌 Asynchronous
I recently learned this word. It means communication when both people don’t have to be active. Email is asynchronous. Slack is semi-synchronous. Zoom meetings are synchronous. While this didn’t matter much in the past, in a world with a distributed workforce, which channel we pick for what purpose is going to be very important to avoid burnout and fatigue (like we’ve seen by using Zoom and Slack for everything). A podcast is an asynchronous audio medium and thus can be consumed at the leisure of the listeners based on their schedule. A lot of townhalls and company updates can be put into a podcast. What’s more is that listeners can consume this content at a faster speed (1.5X), thus actually making it more efficient!
🤑 Cheap
Producing audio is much cheaper than video. The equipment you need to produce great audio is cheap, post-production is a breeze as compared to video. If you had to compare all three mediums — text, video, audio on the scale of effectiveness and cost — audio would surely score the most. Let me be clear, it’s still more expensive to produce as compared to writing an email or a blog, but it’s much more effective, mainly driven by the speaker's own character.
A mix of the 3 reasons is why audio is hands down a superior medium. I’m not suggesting that companies stop doing video and text, but ignoring to build out audio capabilities across different parts of the business can result in a significant disadvantage in this new distributed world.
To end, here’s an example of GoJek’s podcast, which they started way before the pandemic (not sure why they stopped but my guess is when Nadiem left, it just died)
If you’re a company and you’d find this interesting, happy to chat about how you could make this happen! I’m no expert, but I can surely point you in the right direction. You can also read some notes I made about the future of audio
