🌋 The Mantle: So you want to be a podcaster

Welcome back to The Mantle, your ongoing download on all the marketing trends and industry insights brewing below the surface, courtesy of Quartz’s in-house studio, Quartz Creative.

Everyone wants audio, but what does success sound like? This newsletter will dissect the newest trends, how to’s, and why marketers should include podcasts in their strategy.

Speaking of podcasts, we just launched season one of the Quartz Obsession podcast. In this week’s episode, Business Class: Luxury in the Sky, we dug into the ethical and environmental cost of flying with that extra legroom. Click here to listen on our website and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, whether that’s Spotify, Apple, or Google.

— Natalie Diamond, CRO, Quartz

How to start a podcast

We sat down with fellow Quartzian, Alexandra Ossola, who spearheaded the Quartz Obsession podcast to learn the ins and outs of getting started.

What is your typical role and how has podcasting fallen into that?

I’m the membership editor at Quartz and before that, worked as a special projects editor here, so I have a lot of experience being a project manager in the newsroom. I’ve always wanted to start a podcast at Quartz, so I was glad to tap into those skills and passion for this project.

What does it take to be successful when first starting out?

Shape a clear vision and voice to your podcast. We had the advantage that the Quartz Obsession newsletter has existed for years. The biggest question was how to bring it to life in audio.

Once you have your vision, protect it. That can mean being realistic about what you can do in a certain timeframe and understanding how your team works. I would ask myself, ‘Is this do-able or a stretch? If it’s a stretch, will it be worthwhile?’

Keep track of all the moving pieces. From hiring freelance sound engineers and producers to the transcript that gets published along with the podcast to promotional materials, there’s a lot to keep track of! You might not know what all of those things are when you start, but you’ll find out when you’re in it.

Know how to motivate your team. One way to do this is make things super organized and trackable so it’s not stressful to them.

Be punctilious. There is literally not a single detail you can assume is good to go.

We talk a lot about seeing around corners here at Quartz. What are a couple things you wish you would have known?

Things go wrong. Sometimes the power goes out in Dakar and erases all your tape; sometimes a guest gets covid and you have to reorder your entire production calendar. Some things are just out of your control. Make sure you have a team that is flexible enough to accommodate and make something great out of it.

Put your interviewees at ease. People I’ve worked with for years and know really well were totally different behind the mic. Come up with some best practices of how to put people at ease, such as meeting with them ahead of time to prep but encouraging them to not look at a piece of paper during the actual interview.

“There are a million podcasters out there (and more each day). To stand out you must either have a deeper knowledge base than your competition in your niche or a far deeper (and genuine) curiosity—but preferably both.”

– Dov Baron, Leadership and Loyalty

How to make it marketable

You have your podcast up and running. Now what? One of the hardest things in any form of media is to attract and build an audience. Here are some tips to be successful:

Cross promote. Seize the opportunity to trade ad spots, trailer runs, and touts to platforms you align with that have loyal followings.

Share with your network and encourage them to share on their channels, review, and rate your podcast. Word of mouth is one of the biggest drivers for podcast discoverability.

Prioritize SEO. Search engines don’t generally listen to and dedicate context from audio. Augment audio with text:

• Use tags to categorize content.
• Use brief meta descriptions.
• Repurpose a transcription to publish as a blog or parts for social posts.

Sign off with an actionable CTA. Done well, they play an important part in discoverability and audience engagement.

Keep it consistent. Whatever you do, you want listeners to come back wanting more.

• Build trust with your listeners and become part of their daily listening routine.
• Prioritize consistent publishing.

Promote, then promote some more. Market and share each episode the same way you would other online content.

• Create a webpage to drive listeners to with strong design and SEO.
  Make it easy for people to find, listen to, and rate episodes by providing on-site streaming and links to your podcast.

In a nutshell, people listen to podcasts because of great content delivered via the podcast medium. That medium has endless potential. The market for business podcasts is wide open: claim your spot, differentiate, and lock in those sales.

What’s next for the audio industry

Podcasting is evolving from its freewheeling, do-it-yourself roots. And the industry is seeing explosive growth as a major form of digital content.

So what are the issues at play in the audio industry? Discover the future of digital audio and dive into our podcast business field guide.

To understand where podcasts are going, you have to first dig into their origin. Learn more from Quartz journalists about what’s behind the RSS, which platform model is best for you, and the secret behind Spotify’s success in shaping the era of podcasts.

By the digits

$1.5 billion: the predicted audiobook market in the US growing at a 20-25% rate per year for the next few years, making it the world’s largest.

61% of Quartz readers when recently polled find listening to news or business analysis compared to reading is most valuable for convenience and multitasking.

97 minutes: the average time spent listening to a podcast is predicted to rise in 2022.

176 million or 62% of the US 12+ population is listening to online audio weekly. This is 7 million more or 60% of the population as opposed to 2020, an all-time high for this category.

What we’re listening to

• Quartz Obsession Podcast by yours truly
• Unexplainable by Vox
• Cautionary Tales by Pushkin
• Reveal by The Center of Investigative Reporting
• How to Save a Planet by Gimlet Media

See you soon

Thanks for tuning into this months’ edition of The Mantle. If you have an audio anecdote, show recommendation, or SEO podcast secret, send them on over to quartzcreative@qz.com. See you soon!