Podcasts are a popular way for membership associations to connect with members when we can’t meet face to face, but you need to make sure you don’t get burned.
Association executives increasingly recognize the value of using audio to communicate with their workforce, yet many make mistakes that reduce the impact of their communications.
Here are some common missteps organizations make when launching a podcasting program:
What do you want to achieve with your podcast? Do you want to increase productivity? Increase employee engagement? Reduce turnover?
Too many associations hit record before they have an answer to that question. Though most have some awareness of the many benefits of private podcasts, they don’t have a plan in place for how the podcast will help the business reach its goals.
For an goal to be meaningful, it must remain front and center at every stage of the process. It should drive every decision involved in creating and distributing the podcast. Who is the target audience? What will the podcast be about? What metrics can you use to measure its success?
There’s no point in creating content if members aren’t motivated to listen to it. Podcasting offers a dynamic alternative to the many newsletters and other digital marketing noise they receive.
A recent survey of members at a financial association with 25,000 members offered insights into the type of content that engages members. Despite a wide variety of preferences, the largest segment of members favored podcasts that provided insights from association leaders or “deeper discussions” of industry news or best practices.
Length is another important factor. If the podcasts are too long, members are more likely to avoid them. In the survey, most members put the ideal length at five to 15 minutes, while 30% favored podcasts from 15 to 30 minutes, and fewer than 10% of respondents said they like longer shows.
Whenever possible, you should seek to measure your performance in the hopes of identifying problems and making organizational improvements. It’s no different with podcasts. The more insight you can gain into how members are engaging with the content, the better.
Rather than simply blasting your content off into the dark, seek a platform that enables you to track who is listening or watching. If your members aren’t taking advantage of the resource, you should find out as soon as possible and figure out how to make the product more appealing and useful to them.
Segmentation serves two key functions. First, it helps you to deliver customized content to different parts of your membership. In a large organization, not everybody is going to want the same type of content, and in some cases you’ll be producing content with sensitive information that is not for all members’ ears.
Second, your ability to segment the audience is key to analyzing the content’s performance. Knowing that 70% of members have listened to the podcast is valuable, but what’s even more useful is knowing that 90% of those in one age group listened compared with only 20% of those in another. Why is it performing so well in one chapter but not the other? These are the kinds of things you need to know in order to communicate better with your members.
You’re missing a major opportunity if you’re not making it as easy as possible for members to access podcasts whenever, wherever and on whatever device they want.
It’s particularly important that members can download the podcast and listen to it during during mundane tasks. With more members stuck at home in 2020, having something they can have on while they clean the house, work in the garden, or pretend to tune into that work video conference might just be the key to ensuring member engagement.