Your Enterprise Podcast Playbook
This is a special and exciting time for podcasts. It reminds us of 10, 15, even 20 years ago, when blogging was first being used effectively by businesses. Back then, marketing and communication departments knew they had something exciting on their hands, but they still had to learn how to use this medium. The same is true for podcasts today. Podcasting is the new blogging, with its own set of best practices for those who are looking for maximum impact.
Naturally a new medium is going to stir up a lot of excitement, and that’s a good thing. But what we see when we first go in to help enterprise-level businesses with podcasts is that that excitement has not been guided by intentionality. There are sometimes multiple podcasts from different business units, with different styles and formats, often running on unrelated hosting platforms. Whether you are nodding your head at these challenges or whether you are looking to start podcasts for your company, we’ve got you covered. This article is going to lay out the key considerations you and your team should iterate through as you plan to build, launch, and maintain your enterprise level podcasts.
What Kind of Podcasts Can You Build?
It doesn’t make sense to have only one, high-level podcast for large enterprises, particularly Fortune 500 companies. Individual business units have their own objectives and should be given the ability to reach those objectives in their own way.
There are so many ways to utilize internal and external podcasts for your company. Internal podcasts can focus on training, culture, and thought leadership, just to name a few. External podcasts can also be oriented around industry thought leadership or panel discussions on key issues. The sky's the limit. So, let’s get to those key considerations for these podcasts. The only thing to consider is podcasting costs.
Approval Process
What is the current process for approving new shows? Is there even one in place? Key features of such a process should include answers to:
Who will be running the podcast?
What will the production process look like?
How often will episodes be released?
Will it be an ongoing or limited series?
What is the goal of the podcast?
How will those goals be measured?
Where will the budget for this podcast come from?
Without an approval process you are doomed to have uneven quality across the organization, with some teams creating iTunes Top 50 quality content and other teams sounding like they record every episode in someone’s garage, using Microsoft Clip Art for graphics.
House Standards
Your company has put a lot of time and thought into logos and branding. Podcasts should fit seamlessly into that look and feel. Questions that should be asked and answered are:
What kind of artwork/photography will be used?
What do intros and outros sound like?
Will there be any music?
What kind of equipment and software will be used?
What are team members allowed to comment on?
Are external sponsors allowed? Under what conditions?
A standardized look and feel for your company podcasts will make the process easier for everyone, allowing them to focus on content instead of trying to figure out their own unique processes.
When there are no house standards, everything is up for grabs. We’ve seen everything from inopportune political comments to departments interviewing competitors of the company!
Process
Side-by-side with house standards will be the process by which an episode gets made. There are actually a number of people who help bring each podcast episode together. They include:
Podcast host and guest(s)
Producer (who will help screen and invite guests in the first place)
Audio engineer (for editing and mastering episodes)
Video editor (if you choose to make this available this allows you to multi-purpose your content)
Writer (you need show notes and social media prompts; you can also use a writer to create written content based on episodes)
Design resources for graphics and images to go along with the episode (ideally, not using Microsoft Clip Art)
How do all these people work together? What software is used to allow them to coordinate with each other? If you’ve ever wondered how great podcasts come together, you might be starting to see just how challenging it can be to make that magic happen.
Hosting
Podcasts, like any digital media, have to live somewhere on the Internet. Ideally your company should have just a single hosting provider that can provide access to multiple podcasts. This makes it easier for you to get analytics and other key information. We’ve seen at times that companies had different hosts for every single podcast they were producing!
KPIs
Speaking of analytics, as we alluded to above, there should be measurable goals for what the podcast is seeking to achieve. Those KPIs should be available to everyone and be measured, analyzed, and adjusted as necessary.
Legal Questions
Needless to say, at large companies it’s important to have internal discipline regarding what can or can’t be said on podcasts. But even more important is to make sure external guests are treated appropriately. A question we always ask our clients is: “Do you have a guest release form?” This is something guests should be signing before they come on with you, which releases the interview for you to do with it as you wish.
Sometimes guests will reach out and say, “Ah, I actually should not have mentioned that particular item in our recording, can you please remove it?” If there’s a guest release form which addresses such issues, you’re covered legally. If not, well, you’re not.
As exciting as creating a podcast can be, we can understand that all the considerations we’ve mentioned above can feel overwhelming. But keep in mind that they are really one-time considerations. You want to set up a process that works each time without fail so that your various business units can integrate creating episodes into their work schedules, not so that they have a large new burden hanging over them.
We love helping companies think through these issues. Feel free to let us know how we can help!
Have a topic you want to see us cover on the podcast? Write to our host at hello@contentallies.com.
This episode is brought to you by Content Allies.
Content Allies helps B2B companies launch revenue-generating podcasts. From startups to Fortune 500s, we have helped some of the world's leading companies build and run profitable podcasts. Contact us for your free podcast consultation at ContentAllies.com