Articles by: "Corinne Podger—Director, Digital Skills Agency"

Five tips for running (much) better online events

October 12, 2020 Corinne Podger—Director, Digital Skills Agency

This year, we’ve all swapped physical conferences for online ones. Socializing over tiny sandwiches and buffet lines has been replaced by what feels a bit like one long Zoom call.

However, thanks to Covid-19 (if you will), I’ve been able to participate in more events than ever now that they are online. Some have been great, and some have been truly awful. Of course, pretty much all of us are figuring this out in real time. So, here are five tips for creating online events your target attendee might not just sign up for, but actually enjoy.

Choose a platform wisely

If you are launching a virtual event, choosing a platform is likely going to be one of the most significant decisions you make. When selecting or updating your platform choice, involve your target participants. Get a focus group together to demonstrate the available options. Explore the pros and cons collaboratively, so you can settle on one that will make people like them more likely to sign up.

There are certainly plenty of options. Eight months ago, most of us would have balked at a Zoom call. Now, there are dozens of online platforms to choose from, and they’re all rapidly iterating.

Virtual events in virtual reality

You might try a VR platforms like Mozilla Hubs, which was used to deliver IEEEVR back in March. You could also take a look at VFairs , which created a physical convention center last month for The Photography and Video Show. They went all in on the digital replica model, including a foyer (image above), exhibition hall, main stage, workshop rooms, and an in-platform chat facility for networking.

VR platforms might suit you if your participants are tech-savvy enough to learn a new platform quickly, and keen to be immersed in a long-form event and take. But if your ideal attendee only has a spare hour or two and/or doesn’t want to learn a new digital interface, that’s not going to work.

Webinars evolve

At the other end of the complexity scale are webinar platforms like Zoom and Google Meet. Most of us are familiar with them (or have gotten familiar this year). Therefore, you can reasonably expect attendees to jump straight into the proceedings without spending too much time learning the interface.

Webinar platforms can work for time-poor attendees. However, they don’t offer much in the way of networking tools. If that’s important to your audience, you may need a third-party tool like Telegram or Slack to keep them happy.

Conferences that have taken this approach include Splice Beta. They ran dozens of one-hour events throughout September using Google Meet. They also set up a Telegram group for off-site networking during and after the conference period.

Meet in the middle

Platforms that offer a middle way between real-life replication and a webinar include HopIn and EventsAir. They have better interactivity tools. However, they typically take longer for your events team and attendees to learn to use and navigate. If you up your game in terms of platform, you’ll need to be prepared to offer sufficient guidance and tech support for attendees before and during the event.

That was a sacrifice worth making for Audiocraft, a day-long Australian podcast festival held in July. According to organizer Jess O’Callaghan, “There are those accidental encounters at physical conferences. You’re just eating a sandwich with someone you’ve never talked to before, and all of a sudden you have a connection that leads to something new and exciting. Offering that online was essential for our attendees”.

HopIn allowed Audiocraft participants to direct-message each other. They could create their own meetups during conference breaks and attend three-minute speed-networking sessions. To make the event a seamless experience, O’Callaghan’s team spent hours on rehearsals. They used HopIn for staff meetings to ensure everyone was comfortable with the interface. They also appointed “virtual ambassadors” to help field participant questions on the day.

Success is in the details

This attention to detail is essential, according to David Meerman Scott, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Fanocracy. Scott has spoken at more than two dozen virtual events around the world since March. Unfortunately, he says, many virtual events are “mind-numbingly awful”.

“People are using the old-school webinar approach. It’s a big set of slides with a voice track over it, and a tiny thumbnail of someone at their kitchen table,” he says. “The other thing that’s happening is people are trying to recreate an in-person event and put it online. That is essentially televising a keynote, like a TED talk. Why would someone pay or persevere through a TED talk that’s not just 12 minutes, but 45?”

Scott has just published Standout Virtual Events, co-authored with Digital Content Next editor and event organizer Michelle Manafy. The book is packed with recommendations for designing events, considerations for choosing a platform, ideas for audience interactivity, and pricing strategies.

Critically, the book also offers tips to help speakers deliver their best on the day. “As an event organizer, you have to take charge of the quality of the event. You simply cannot assume the speaker is going to be able to pull it off without your help,” Scott says.

Define and measure your impact

Razlan Manjaji has led the events team at the South China Morning Post for the past year. Under his leadership, the team of 12 has gone from running one virtual event a month to one every week, with revenue targets for most of them. “That was a leap of faith for us, because it was four times our previous workload,” he says.

It’s involved more than faith, though. Manjaji sets KPIs for every event, and gives each event a net score based on attendee satisfaction. The Post uses Bizzabo, a platform that allows users to track performance on key metrics.

SCMP’s KPIs include overall sign-ups as well as the percentage of attendees that meet a sponsor’s desired demographics. They also measure actual turn-out on the day and how long attendees spend on the event platform. They also track well as whether they interact with the content and each other during the event. And, of course, they are keeping a close eye on revenue generation.

For events aimed at new audiences, like the Digital Transformation Series for tech leaders, Manjaji takes a pilot-and-scale approach. He works with supportive brands like Microsoft to sponsor a test event before turning it into an ongoing project.

Not everything has worked well, or indeed at all. An attempt to return to live events in June with a kindergarten showcase aimed at young parents was “a disaster,” according to Manjaji. But the learnings are being ploughed into a second education-focused conference later this month.

“It’s a learning time for everyone, and there will be more mistakes than usual. But the point is that we’re moving in the right direction, and I feel very encouraged by that fact,” he says.

Don’t forget the long tail

Yes, you can put the whole conference on YouTube for free. Or you can make it available as a recording for a set price. But is that the best value you can have from that content, given the time, energy and money you’ve put into making it perfect?

I’ve been really impressed by SRCCON, which ran online in July. Some of that content was repurposed into Watch Parties a few weeks later. A small selection has been made permanently public, which is an innovative way of attracting new audiences to your brand, long after you’ve turned off the computer at the end of your next event.

Embrace experimentation

My last tip is to stop wishing for a return to the “old normal.” For however long social distancing is with us, and it could be years, offline meetings will be risky to run and tough to make profitable. Of course we miss the camaraderie of physical conferences. It’s a chance to see old friends and have those accidental meetings that help drive new projects and business. But this is no time for nostalgia. It’s a time for brave experimentation in the online space to reach and leverage new audiences for your brand.

Perspectives

Inspiration in a storm: three initiatives to help managers cope with Covid-19

April 29, 2020 Corinne Podger—Director, Digital Skills Agency

Managing a media outlet right now is a job from hell. You’re working from home, maybe for the first time, possibly while home-schooling your kids. The only way you can see to your core people is via a computer screen. And you are trying to steer your business through a financial crisis that is costing thousands of jobs and forcing the closure of hundreds of newsrooms worldwide.

The good news is that resources are cropping up that offer ideas and networking opportunities to help you survive a catastrophic fall in advertising income, sick staff, furloughs, layoffs, and redundancies. These resources can also help you respond to challenges that predated Covid-19 – and will persist after the pandemic – like revenue diversification and product development.

Splice ‘Low-Res’ – a virtual media online check-in

Splice Low Res is one way to keep your networking alive and share ideas on how a post-pandemic media landscape might look. These live webinars are held every two weeks, and are hosted by Splice Media co-founders Alan Soon and Rishad Patel.

Each webinar features speakers and thought leaders sharing insights and answering questions on innovation, financial resilience, and new approaches to raising media revenue. They attract hundreds of editors, reporters and media leaders from Asia, Europe, and the US. They can be joined live via Google Meet or viewed afterwards on YouTube.

“I think our timing was right, because people were recovering from the shock of staying home and not being able to travel,” Soon says. “This gave them an opportunity to connect with people around topics they care about.”

Splice is also running an ongoing global survey of media managers. It has drawn responses from dozens of editors and managers from more than 30 countries. Nearly half say they expect job cuts in the next 12 months.

Soon encourages managers to plan for the crisis persisting into 2021. “The first move should be to assume a 50 to 80 percent drop in revenue over the course of this year. So, you need to build as much financial runway as you can,” he says. “Hoard as much cash as possible. Make sure you’re sending out your invoices quickly, and that you’re chasing up on those. Defer your costs as much as possible. Could you re-negotiate your rent to be paid out later in the year?

“At the same time, start imagining the new products and services you’ll need next year – including what the post-Covid world will need. And start leaning into that because that’s really going to be a new chapter for journalism.”

The Online News Association’s “Community Circles”

ONA has launched guided conversations to help editors develop detailed strategic responses to Covid-19 and beyond. The idea emerged after ONA’s CEO, Irving Washington, emailed the entire membership on March 19th with two questions: “Are you okay? How can we help?”

Five themes emerged from the hundreds of responses that flooded back: self-care, management and leadership in a time of crisis, covering a fast-moving pandemic, revenue and fundraising challenges, and building and launching projects that still need to be realized if outlets are to stay agile, innovative and viable.

“These are pretty deep questions,” says Trevor Knoblich, ONA’s Chief Knowledge Officer. They include: How do I keep my team engaged? How do we report on coronavirus and not lose track of our long-term focus? What do we do now that advertisers are rolling back their relationships? “These are nuanced and complex questions that might have different answers for different types of newsrooms.”

To accommodate that complexity, ONA created “Community Circles.” These align members with an interest in one or more themes to groups of around 20 people, and assign a host for each group to convene regular online discussions.

Knoblich says the groups use tools like Slack, Google Docs, and Zoom. Beyond that, the conversations have a free rein to share ideas and problem-solve. “At least a third of the groups are looking at making a concrete resource that can be shared, or commitments that they’re aspiring to,” he says.

The first Circles began meeting this week. The program is already oversubscribed, but Knoblich says a second round could open in May. The Circles model is simple to adapt and adopt. And Knoblich says that he’s happy to answer questions if another outlet or organization wants to try something similar.

Fathm: The Distributed Newsroom Playbook

Newsrooms have switched from office-based hubs to decentralized working practically overnight. To help them make a success of this new way of working, the news lab and consultancy Fathm created the Distributed Newsroom Playbook in less than 10 days.

The Playbook contains six straightforward modules with associated toolboxes. They cover such topics as how to manage and train a distributed team, how to design workflows, and editorial structures when most of your staff are working from home, and how to maintain and boost audience engagement. It also includes a section on tools and technologies to support distributed working.

“The Playbook is designed for the type of manager who doesn’t have the luxury of strategic thinking right now, because they’re trying to keep the operation afloat,” Fathm co-founder Fergus Bell Bell says. “We know that the news industry does quick fixes that end up being the long-term solution. So, we wanted to create a resource that offers a quick fix that will work for the long term. Thus, we limit the number of fixes managers actually need to do.”

The Playbook is designed as a resource you can dip into to drive and support critical decisions. These include issues like “how to run a newsroom when you can’t see or interact with your staff, and let them get on with their jobs at the same time as checking in that they’re okay, and how to respond to issues like sudden sickness and absences.”

Bell says the Playbook has had enthusiastic take-up by newsrooms in Europe, the United States and South America since it was published on April 6th. And the team is using feedback from users to help the Playbook iterate and expand.

Consolidate now to weather the storm

I’ll say it again: It’s a hell of a time to be a media manager. There’s no map for this terrain. The last time editors had to navigate a global pandemic of this magnitude was at the tail end of the First World War, before the invention of television or the internet. But the huge upsurge in public demand for news is a clear sign that communities want and need journalism to survive. In some towns they’re fighting to keep newspapers open.

So, yes, look at cuts and savings. Explore some of the forums for sharing ideas mentioned in this article. Seek and find inspiration. But also look at how you can give your users a clear pathway to help you keep the lights on and stay open.

Check in with them to see if they need products and services that you can provide. Make sure you’ve made it easy for them to subscribe, donate, and advertise. Do what you can to strengthen your relationships with your community, in a way that makes it possible for them to support the survival of journalism through Covid-19 – and beyond.

How three media outlets are taking their own approach to TikTok

March 18, 2020 Corinne Podger—Director, Digital Skills Agency

The TikTok app has now been downloaded nearly two billion times. And a recent surge in new users is being attributed, at least in part, to people escaping the boredom and worry of coronavirus self-isolation and lockdowns. At some point, the pandemic’s tempest will subside, so what long-term strategies can publishers and journalists put in place to get the most from the platform into the future?

In January I wrote a lengthy Medium Post linking to best practice examples and tutorials. In this piece, three very different media outlets share what’s worked, what hasn’t, and their advice to publishers joining TikTok for the first time.

The national paper

Dave Earley, Audience Editor, Guardian Australia

TikTok Account: https://tiktok.com/@guardianaustralia

The extraordinary success of The Washington Post’s account piqued Early’s interest in TikTok early on. But he hung back for a while before signing Guardian Australia up. “I couldn’t make a commitment to a personality-driven approach like the Post,” he says. “After noticing a few other media outlets posting straight news videos, I decided to get started that way in August last year.”

Guardian Australia’s account has two aims. The first is to build brand awareness with young audiences. The second, says Earley, is to “reach young people who share a deep interest with some of our key coverage areas, like the environment.”

Successful early posts paired news clips with popular sounds. More recently, hits have focused on national challenges like the recent floods and bushfires. “Our bushfires explainer did quite well, taking inspiration from a NowThis Politics impeachment explainer on TikTok that went viral,” Earley says.

However, their strongest performing video has been a surprise. Nancy Pelosi’s reaction to an apparent handshake snub by Donald Trump has had 2.2 million views since it was uploaded in February. Earley attributes these numbers to the fact that TikTok showed the video to Indian users as well as Australians.

Guardian Australia’s news differs from the approach many publishers are taking to focus on timeless content, given that TikTok doesn’t display the date a piece of content was posted.

TikTok’s metrics are also quite limited. However, Earley says that’s fine while Guardian Australia continues to find its best voice on the platform. “Our use of the platform is still experimental and not a top priority for maintaining a regular posting schedule,” he says.

“I’m looking at topline followers and likes, not so much as a measure of success, but more to keep an eye on overall growth. I also look at the individual video play counts and number of comments to see what gained traction.”

The online regional

Chiara Rinaldi, Head of Audience, Wales Online

TikTok Account: https://www.tiktok.com/@walesonline

Wales Online’s account also launched in August last year, targeting people under 24 living in Wales.

“For us, the aim isn’t just to grow a large TikTok following. It’s also to learn more about how we serve Generation Z and get a better understanding of the way they express themselves and consume news and media,” Rinaldi says.

“When we started, we were the only UK regional publisher [on TikTok] so we didn’t have anyone to compare to or look up to for good practice.”

Every publisher I spoke to, including Rinaldi, has mentioned The Washington Post as an example of best practice. However, it’s not one they necessarily want or need to duplicate. “I didn’t think emulating [the Post] would achieve what we set out to do, so we’ve just experimented a lot to see what worked for us,” she says.

That has meant actively seeking the right tone and approach for content, and developing new production skills. “Our newsroom is quite confident in producing social videos but we quickly realized that we needed a completely new approach on TikTok, from our ideas process to how we shoot and edit,” Rinaldi says.

For Wales Online, top performing videos have combined “person-led Welsh identity content” with TikTok trends and popular sounds. These include an American pronounces Welsh places and reasons to marry a Welsh person. Videos of beautiful locations have done best of all, like this mid-winter sunrise at Snowdon.

Repurposing user-generated content has been “a mixed bag” in terms of response, Rinaldi says. “We’ve found food, comedy, and climate change content has performed well,” she says. “But we’ve also had videos that bombed, like people singing and a dog that can say hello. It’s [also] a lot harder to get traction for videos that don’t fit with a challenge, like our videos of the South Wales floods.”

Following seven months of trying different things, Wales Online has begun formulating a clear strategy to engage its TikTok followers with more serious news content. And this is a goal Rinaldi says will be challenging given that on-platform metrics consist primarily of video views, follower numbers, and likes on individual posts.

“So far, we’ve found TikTok to be a really receptive and encouraging platform to work with,” she says. “Our audience is very open, provides us with regular updates and they’re happy to answer our questions, which is refreshing!”

The specialist publication

Jake Banas, Social Media Manager, Futurism

TikTok Account: https://www.tiktok.com/@futurismmedia

New York-based publisher Futurism is using TikTok to connect with young science and tech enthusiasts all over the world. “We began by implementing a video strategy we’ve run with on most other platforms – posting our most popular short clips and well-known viral memes to attract attention,” Banas says.

Futurism’s best performing videos have combined educational clips with popular sounds, like this explainer on how astronauts take a bath in space.

Later on, The Washington Post’s runaway success inspired Futurism to expand its uploads to include videos featuring its staff and newsroom more candidly. However, doing this well has turned out to be harder than it looks. “While everyone wants to be Dave Jorgenson, it’s incredibly difficult to do,” he says.

“Most newsrooms don’t have a dedicated TikTok team. The biggest challenge is simply the amount of time it can take to produce quality content, but the good thing is that – unlike traditional video – TikTok has made it easy for many people to utilize powerful video editing tools to create posts for a mobile-first audience.”

Banas says Futurism is learning what it can from TikTok’s limited metrics and whimsical algorithm to achieve specific goals, such as engaging with young women interested in science and technology.

For now, Futurism has “pulled back” from regular posts to focus on other priorities. But Banas says timeless clips posted weeks or months ago still attract fresh audiences – another example of the evident irrelevance of time to the TikTok algorithm.

Thinking of joining TikTok in 2020? Here are some pro tips:

Earley, Rinaldi, and Banas have these tips for newcomers to the platform:

Spend time as a user and watch plenty of content before diving in head-first.
Think about what you want to achieve on the platform
Ask yourself how you’d explain a big story, or what it’s like to be a journalist, to a teenager.
Try some or all of these genres: explainers, vlogs, text on screen to music, lip syncing.
Decide whether you can commit to putting staff on camera and let them do “fun stuff.”
Use the ‘drafts’ function to learn the basics like adding and timing captions.
Read the comments to better understand who you are reaching on the platform.
Don’t feel under pressure to post often.
The ethos of TikTok is authenticity, so embrace it and get the whole newsroom involved.
Be prepared to relax your brand guidelines for an entirely different platform.
Interact with your audience. Creator comments and replies mean a lot to viewers.
Be original and have fun!

Yes, your newsroom can get into podcasts. Here’s how.

December 19, 2019 Corinne Podger—Director, Digital Skills Agency

Starting a podcast is easier than ever now. But how do you create a sustainable strategy around audio content, especially in the local and regional newsrooms that are dwindling at an alarming pace? That was the question Alison Gow, Digital Editor in Chief for regional content at Reach Plc – one of Britain’s biggest regional publishers – began exploring last year.

Reach had several podcasts spread across the business, created as passion projects by staff keen to experiment with audio. These included Black Mirror Cracked and Blood Red, both of which performed very well with audiences.

However, Reach lacked a strategic framework around its shows, which would better enable growth. So, at the end of 2018, it began formalizing its podcast output, switching from Audioboom to Acast. It also created new internal positions to explore the long-term viability of audio content and other emerging platforms.

One of those staff, Michael Pearson, now a permanent podcast producer at Reach, says the results were enormously encouraging. “We found that the levels of engagement of a podcast audience were far greater than any other platform we were currently utilizing, be it website dwell time, video watch-rate on our owned and operated websites or on other social platforms,” he says. The podcast audience also gave additional value to Reach’s existing sites, because people clicked through from podcasts to the site and vice versa.

Putting formal support structures in place gave shape and focus to existing shows. It also provided strategic direction to new ones, including Everything is Black and White and a mental health show called No Really I’m Fine.

Audience demand

However, one question the publisher still didn’t have an answer for was whether there was an appetite among regional audiences for podcast content made specifically for them. “Audio at the moment is dominated by comedy, true crime, and sport. We wanted to know whether local news providers could find a foothold in that market, and – on the other side of that equation – how a local audience might discover that content,” Gow says.

So, Reach joined forces with another large regional publisher, JPI Media, and a new podcast provider called Entale, to bid for Google funding to explore the viability of local and regional shows. In July this year they secured a €500,000 Google News Innovation grant over two years for the Laudable Project.

Google’s Digital News Innovation Fund was created to fund creativity in digital journalism and the development of new business models. Madhav Chinnappa, Director of News Ecosystem Development at Google says, “We’re seeing more and more innovation by publishers in podcasts and voice technologies, and we’re proud to support initiatives like Laudable which can have a real and positive impact on the news ecosystem.”

Reach used the grant to help pay for studios, recording equipment and dedicated podcast producers. It also paid for training for around 50 reporters to help them turn ideas for new regional podcasts into reality in three trial cities – Manchester, Birmingham, and Edinburgh.

The new shows will be available across all major podcast platforms. However, they’ll also be hosted by Entale, which is using some of the grant funds to design bespoke analytics that give greater granularity on key indicators. Entale will also build an Android version of its IOS app, through which users can access interactive visuals and other online content as they listen.

The first Laudable shows are starting to go live, beginning with The North Poll, a show about politics from a northern British perspective, which launched in November. Other new shows include North In Numbers, which gives a human voice to data journalism stories, The Edinburgh Briefing, and Scran, a new podcast about food from The Scotsman. More podcasts will launch in early 2020.

Building the business

Gow says the Google grant has given Reach and JPI “breathing space” to test the value of podcasts to local and regional audiences without the pressure to monetize those shows straight away. “We wouldn’t have been able to scale like this [without Google’s support],” she says. “The time commitment and investment involved in this project, the cost of building studios – it’s a huge amount of money when you’re a regional publisher.”

Now, she says, they’ve “been given a low-risk environment to find out whether what we create has value beyond being appreciated … that it has value commercially, and can attract advertising clients, and we’ll be layering commercial into it next year.”

That will include creating a new post to sell audio advertising. Mind you, that’s a skill that doesn’t come naturally to journalists and editors. Nor is it a natural fit for advertising departments at newspapers that have yet to dip a toe in the podcast ocean, and which will face stiff competition from an increasingly crowded market in 2020.

Structure and strategy

Gow acknowledges that most publishers don’t have the luxury of Google funding, but has some tips for outlets that have organic podcasts that need structure and strategy to have a chance of long-term sustainability. “First, you really need to look at your audience, and at your digital analytics to find the themes that people are engaging with.

“For us, sports like rugby and football absolutely drive our audiences and have a huge fan base, so that was a no-brainer. It’s where we can start building revenue quickly because there are advertisers keen to get on board and the opportunity to host live events.”

They also found that their audiences were quite interested in financial information particularly because “audio means they can tell those stories in their own voices.” And Gow says that “combining those voices with insights from our data unit in a show like North By Numbers, moves the format on from being a host talking to an expert about housing shortages, to an individual who becomes a first-person case study for that data, and that’s incredibly humanizing.”

Trying to monetize podcasts before experimenting with audio is difficult, and Gow cautions against it. “You do need to create content first, but as soon as you’ve done it, you’ve got something your advertising team can show to clients as a proof of concept,” she says.

“And sometimes you just need to think of a podcast as loss-leader marketing. That may be what some of our Laudable podcasts become, a way of exploring issues that are occupying minds in places like Edinburgh or Birmingham, which might attract a sponsor at some point, but might not but it’s good journalism and may be worth doing on that basis alone.”

Monetization matters

In 2020, Gow says her focus will shift to trying to monetize the new shows. This includes those that are purely journalistic, as well as branded content programs.

“My approach next year is going to be working with our commercial team on themes we have in mind for 2020, what clients might want to be associated with different ideas, and what kinds of stories would overlap with what they’re interested in.” That doesn’t mean that advertisers will dictate the content, she says. Rather, they’ll work in partnership through things like sponsorship.

Gow believes that there’s an audience for the ‘how to live a good life’ podcast market beyond mindfulness. This could include practical questions like how to have a good divorce, how to buy your first house, how to prepare for a funeral, or how to pick the right school. “And there are potential commercial partnerships around all those ideas, because I can see someone tuning in while they’re in the kitchen asking Alexa to find something to listen to.”

Tracking results

The team at Reach adheres to the strategic approach recommended by the Reuters Institute to help outlets experiment with new formats and approaches while keeping business as usual running smoothly. “SMART principles have been drummed into me since I went on my first management course about 20 years ago, and we also had Google milestones to hit,” she says.

“We’ve been specific about what we need to deliver for Google, what we tell editors to achieve, and what our podcast producers need to deliver, and all of that can be measured.” However, podcast statistics are still somewhat lacking. So, Entale is building bespoke analytics as part of their partnership.

Beyond that Gow says that they are tracking what’s been produced, how many people have generated ideas, and how engaged they are in the process to gain a better sense of staff buy-in and participation. “I work with incredibly smart people who love journalism and care about their audiences.” And giving them the tools to achieve good journalism on the podcast platform – the physical hardware, the training, the encouragement and feedback to build confidence and deliver the best possible outputs – has made it achievable.

Ultimately, Gow would encourage any size newsroom to experiment with podcasts. “With all this in place, it’s 100% realistic for any newsroom to create great podcasts.

What the Australian Broadcasting Corporation can teach podcasters everywhere

October 24, 2019 Corinne Podger—Director, Digital Skills Agency

Research presented at Australia’s fourth national podcast conference offers some good news for media outlets that have yet to put a toe in the podcast waters. Ozpod, convened annually by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia’s public broadcaster, commissions a national podcast survey each year to accompany the event.

ABC’s 2019 Podcast research found that nearly 90% of Australians have now heard of podcasting, although just 19% listen to a podcast once a week. However, the number of regular listeners – people who listen to a podcast at least once a month – is growing by about 30% year-on-year.

Kellie Riordan, head of ABC Audio Studios, says that represents enormous opportunity for growth. “Because once people do start listening, they listen a lot. For example, if they’ve listened in the last week, they’re listening to more than one show, and consume between six and 10 episodes, so that’s fantastic in terms of growth,” Riordan says.

She says that about 80% of people who start listening to a show go on to listen to it all the way through. This is a particularly promising statistic for outlets keen to scatter advertisements throughout a podcast.

Search and discovery

The survey also looks at discoverability. According to the results, the most popular way of choosing a new podcast is via word of mouth, with 71% of respondents saying this was their favorite method of finding fresh must-listen content.

Riordan says the ABC takes advantage of this by cross promoting its own podcasts. It also uses its broadcast and social media channels to ensure the audiences who are most likely to want to listen to a particular podcast hear about it.

This approach “makes it a very sticky platform for us. For example if you listen to Richard Fidler on Conversations and he tells you we’ve got a great new true crime podcast, or we’ve got Ladies We Need To Talk, you’re going to go and check it out,” she says.

Spread the good word

There are plenty of pathways to build word-of-mouth momentum around a new show, even for outlets that don’t have the advantage of being a public broadcaster, Riordan adds. “You can leverage it through social media, through newsletters, through making short-form videos – and if you’re an independent podcaster who can’t lean on the ‘network’ effect’, you can tap into communities and influencers in your genre.”

Riordan says the ABC has done this successfully with No Feeling is Final. To promote the award-winning show that explores suicidal feelings, ABC asked national organizations like Beyond Blue and the Black Dog Institute to let their audiences know about it.

She says some audiences are also underserved, particularly children. This is particularly the case at a time when parents “are increasingly looking for ways to get kids off screens, and also to share in co-listening experiences with their children”.

In response to audience research, the ABC launched a children’s ethics show, Short & Curly, in 2016. It’s remained one of the broadcaster’s most popular podcasts ever since, and has been made into a book and a collaboration with WNYC in New York in 2017. “Building on this success, the ABC has created a whole suite of family shows that both kids and adults can enjoy, from Fierce Girls, to Animal Sound Safari, Imagine This, and Classic Kids,” Riordan says.

Make a splash

Just over half the survey respondents said they felt ‘overwhelmed’ by the increasing choice of podcasts. And, at first glance, the finding appears to give weight to suggestions that the podcast market may have peaked.

Riordan acknowledges that creating a splash in a crowded market isn’t easy. She urges outlets preparing to get into podcasting to thoroughly research their target audience and design a truly differentiated product. “People get it wrong if they think they have to pump out a podcast every week. You really need to think what your true podcast value is, what the audience is, and whether a [time-limited] series is a better fit,” she says.

She also points out that the gap in podcast awareness and listening, particularly among older audiences – who comprise just 8% of regular listeners in Australia – means podcast creators still need to explain to potential listeners how to find, subscribe to and download their show.

That’s echoed by the Australia-based editor of Podnews James Cridland, who presented the survey results at the OzPod conference. “My biggest recommendation is to have a big bang launch, and I’m not talking about an ad on page 5. I’m talking about ads throughout the day on your website, a strap on your newspaper for the week. Or, if you’re a radio station, it means promos every hour for the whole day of your launch, and instructions that make it easy and obvious for people to find and listen to it,” he says.

“If you do this, then you almost guarantee yourself a good position in the charts. Because podcast charts are trending charts, there’ll be some momentum because lots of people are subscribing to you for the first time.”

Building on a legacy

Cridland also has advice for legacy brands that are considering their first move into podcasting. “Firstly, use your brand and your talent,” he says. “There’s a temptation to launch a new brand around podcasts, rather than using your legacy brand. But if you do that you end up not having any heritage, and more importantly no points of difference from all the other podcasts out there.

“So if you are, let’s say, ‘The Sun’, you might launch a podcast called Bizarre – which is their big show business page – or a podcast with a star columnist, because your brand is your main asset here.”

Cridland says there’s also work to be done by many advertising departments on how to sell podcasts. He recommends approaching an agency that can provide specialist advice on how to sell a new podcast product to potential advertisers.

“People who sell full page ads in newspapers find it quite difficult to go out and sell audio, so having sales people and teams that understand the specifics of selling this kind of content is absolutely essential,” he says.

About the author

Corinne Podger is the Director of The Digital Skills Agency, which provides consultancy and training in mobile journalism, digital multimedia, social media and digital return on investment for newsrooms all over the world. She serves as a judge for the WAN-IFRA World Digital Media Awards, and as an advisor to the European Journalism Observatory at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Innovation

How mojo thinking scored Trinity Mirror a top-shelf podcast

April 27, 2018 Corinne Podger—Director, Digital Skills Agency

As podcast ideas go, it was a cracker. Make a six-part show about Black Mirror and release the entire series for fans to binge on as an accompaniment to the show’s fourth season on Netflix. That was the genesis of Black Mirror Cracked, the brainchild of Trinity Mirror’s editorial trainer Suchandrika Chakrabarti. She also championed the idea of “mojo” thinking, which leverages relatively inexpensive and accessible tools to create compelling content.

“Podcasts have had a huge resurgence, as we all know, and the editors were looking for ideas for new ones, as this format attracts sponsorship and all media companies are looking for new sources of revenue,” she says.

“Having written about Black Mirror in 2016 when the first Netflix series came out, and had good numbers and SEO value from that, I thought a podcast would give us an extra edge, particularly in the US where the show has such a good audience and where podcasts are so popular,” she says.

To promote the podcast on Trinity’s text channels, Chakrabarti arranged an interview with Black Mirror’s creators, Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones. The interview was recorded on an iPhone, with a simple clip-microphone that can be bought online for $11, with a view to writing it up later.

But when Chakrabarti and her producer Daniel Jackson listened back to the recording, they felt it was good enough for a standalone seventh episode, as well as to provide content for the other six. “We decided to put a clip from it at the top of each of our podcasts, because it’s great to have Charlie Brooker’s voice as the first thing you hear,” she says.

Smart Phone Thinking

Using a smartphone was a radical move at Trinity, where most podcasts are recorded in a sound-booth with a professional microphone – but less radical for Chakrabarti and Jackson, who have helped pioneer ‘mojo’ at Trinity for capturing video and doing Facebook Lives in the field. The audio wasn’t perfect, but the pair crossed their fingers that the audience would forgive a slightly rawer sound in return for hearing from Brooker and Jones.

It paid off. Black Mirror Cracked went live on 29 December, the same day as the Netflix series, and went straight to Number 2 in iTunes. In all, it spent four months in “Bingeworthy.”

“The numbers were insane – 20,000 listens in the first week – far beyond what we were expecting,” Chakrabarti says. “They were listening very far into each podcast, too, not getting bored or switching off, so we were definitely doing something right.”

Chakrabarti says American audiences were more tolerant of the podcast’s raw sound than British listeners. She attributes this to the high audio standards set by the BBC, which consistently reaches over half the UK population each week.

“It’s totally understandable that anything less will attract critics. I’d say that we also suffered from putting all seven episodes out at once, because we improved our technique and sound as we went along with the production, but the audience got to hear them all at once,” she says.

“And no one pointed out the Charlie Brooker episode as having worse audio than any of the others, so it definitely wasn’t the smartphone. It was the learning we needed to do along the way.”

A Smart Investment

Black Mirror Cracked added additional episodes, for a total of 22, and completed its run last week. The other equipment used to make it consisted of a podcast microphone from the Blue Yeti range ($130-$270), and a Mac software program called Audio Hijack for recording Skype interviews ($59). Audio editing was done on the free, open-source editor Audacity.

“So our costs, minus our time, were just a shade over 200 dollars, US,” Chakrabarti says.

Other Trinity Mirror departments are now considering swapping the sound-booth for smartphone recordings in the field, particularly when a sense of ‘being present’ is part of the story, like sports matches. Chakrabarti says she wants to see more text reporters give ‘mojo’ – mobile journalism – a try.

As she points out, text journalists are recording interviews all the time and much of what they capture goes to waste. She recommends going into those situations at least thinking the audio might be good enough to publish on its own. Besides, “the combination of my phone and clip mic are small enough to stay in my bag all the time, and of course the device takes great photos and video – so if the chance for a great story comes up, you’ll never miss it.”

Corinne Podger is a digital journalism educator and consultant for media outlets, NGOs and businesses. She is a specialist trainer in smartphone storytelling for television, radio, online and social media, and has taught more than 2500 journalists and communicators to use smartphones for TV and social video, radio, podcasts and photography.

She has worked as a trainer with BBC Media Action, Thomson Reuters Foundation, the Financial Times, Fairfax Media, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Konrad Adenaeur Stiftung and supported learning for journalists from over 30 countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Australasia.

Corinne has also lectured on mobile journalism at universities and colleges in Australia, Europe and the United States, and speaks regularly at journalism conferences.

She runs bespoke consultancies and individual workshops on request. To contact Corinne, click here.

Innovation

Do you need a head of apps?

March 6, 2018 Corinne Podger—Director, Digital Skills Agency

Mobile journalism sounds like a great idea for cash-strapped media outlets. Get your journalists to use smartphones to shoot and edit video and photos, and save a bundle versus the cost of DSLRs and pro camcorders.

It sounds simple enough. But newsrooms that are getting on the “mojo” bandwagon have learned the hard way that asking journalists to find and use tools to create mobile content on their own can be a quality control nightmare.

Most consumer video editing apps reduce the size of a video file on export. Some give it a squeeze on import as well, meaning the finished video is fine for social platforms but useless for television. Some audio editing apps will export MP3s, but charge extra for broadcast-standard .WAV files.

A Very British Approach

The BBC recommends third-party apps to its journalists, and even creates apps to help its reporters file directly into the broadcaster’s servers.

So, what’s an editor to do? Well, one way is to appoint someone to curate your apps. At the BBC, where smartphones are increasingly used to create content for linear, on-demand and social platforms, there is a “Mobile Apps” team, which includes a group of IOS developers.

They’ve developed an in-house video recording app that shoots at 25fps (a requirement in PAL-system countries like the UK) rather than the standard 30fps, and which can file video recordings direct to the BBC’s news ingest system. The team also curates an internal-facing BBC Apps Store, where journalists can download bespoke BBC and recommended third-party apps.

The BBC’s internal training department also employs mobile journalism trainers like Marc Blank-Settle and Deirdre Mulcahy who teach reporters how to use a smartphone for radio, photography and video storytelling, and how to use the apps best suited to their jobs. In mid-2017, the BBC published some of that learning during a ‘Mojo Week’ at the BBC Academy.

That being said, the BBC is a huge news outlet with 8,000 journalists, who are also free to try out new apps to find ones that work for them.

Going Dutch

The Dutch broadcaster Omrop Fryslân is a much smaller operation than the BBC, and its in-house mobile trainer Wytse Vellinga has a high level of control over the apps and phones the reporters use to make TV, radio, online and social content.

Every journalist is required to learn to use their phone to create content for all three platforms, and to use a curated list of apps that give the best results. They receive two days’ training and follow-up support.

“If you do not standardize, people tend to get lost in what they can do with their phones,” Mr Vellinga says. “There are just too many different apps out there that claim to deliver quality results – but those results will vary too much for use in a newsroom.”

The Irish Way

A combination of the above two approaches is in place at Irish broadcaster RTÉ, where smartphones are also used across all platforms – radio, TV, online and social. Many journalists at RTÉ use smartphones some of the time, but the broadcaster also has a small team of mobile journalists who shoot and edit on mobile and publish to online and social first, and then, if appropriate, repurposed for television.

The team is led by video journalist Philip Bromwell, who says reporters across the organization are encouraged to use apps designed with reporters in mind – Filmic Pro for shooting, and Luma Fusion for editing – and to adopt consistent styles in their choice of fonts and supers.

“This content could include anything from a reporter taking a still photograph for an online article, to a journalist shooting and editing an entire story on their phone,” he says.

Having an in-house ‘mojo’ team means any RTÉ reporter can get immediate, job-specific guidance from a colleague on which app to use – Bromwell says his team has experimented with more than 50 and narrowed day-to-day use down to “a handful” – and the wider newsroom has a small group of experts to advise on file formats and workflows.

“That said, I also encourage colleagues or trainees to explore and ‘play’ with apps themselves,” Bromwell says. “Mobile journalism is still evolving – none of us has all the answers yet!”

So, while the proliferation of accessible and affordable mobile content creation tools abound, it is important that you set standards for the content. Experimentation is essential, but so are leadership and quality results.

Corinne has also lectured on mobile journalism at universities and colleges in Australia, Europe and the United States, and speaks regularly at journalism conferences.

She runs bespoke consultancies and individual workshops on request. To contact Corinne, click here.