Clear and concise information is the most important part of any interaction within your company. We’ve broken down the different ways internal communications podcasts can impact and improve the way you communicate with your employees, but the question now is how to correctly go about doing so.
We’ve broken down your employee podcast into four main steps: storytelling, recording your episode, releasing your podcast, and tracking engagement. By breaking down your podcast into smaller tasks, it becomes easier to manage and produce.
1. Storytelling
Your content is the heart of your internal communications podcast – without it, your podcast could not function. However, if your content comes off as disjointed, your employees may have a hard time giving it the attention it needs.
Develop a roadmap for your internal materials. If you’re developing training content, consider your start and end points. What prerequisite knowledge will your new employees need to know before progressing to the next step? When you come up with your script or write your show notes, keep in mind that even if this is a factual, informative piece, there should be some element of storytelling. Your episode, no matter the length, needs a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Use a segmented approach to keep your content uniform across all of your episodes, and to assist your employees in compartmentalizing what instructions or information is for what task. This allows you to target specific actions that need to be taken, but also gives your employees an outline of sorts to your internal communications podcast.
2. Recording Your Episode
With modern technology, recording your episode is easier than ever. Whether you’ve got a desktop computer with a designated microphone, or you utilize the Podbean app’s remote recording feature, there are fewer and fewer steps between you and a finished piece.
No matter where you’re recording, there are a few key things to keep in mind to make sure that your audio is the best it can be. First, make sure that you do a few test recordings in the same way that you will actually record (i.e., if you want to record at your standing desk or at your kitchen table, create some test recordings in these environments with your current tools). Not only will this familiarize you with your hardware and the process, it ensures that nothing in your environment is negatively impacting your audio.
Second, don’t be afraid to troubleshoot your audio by moving yourself and things in the room around. Sometimes issues with sound quality can be improved or fixed entirely by maneuvering things around. For example:
- Is there an echo in your audio? Try recording in a smaller space, or in a place with more things hanging on the wall. Echo happens because unencumbered walls and hard surfaces will bounce your sound back at you, so try hanging extra curtains or blankets up, or relocating to a space that’s a bit more cluttered, carpeted, etc.
- Is your audio too quiet? Don’t be afraid to get closer to your mic, whether you’re recording from a desktop microphone or your phone’s internal microphone. If you’re worried about rises and dips in the sound, make sure that your device is on a stable surface and find a way to sit that is both comfortable and close enough to your mic for you to sit still for the length of your recording.
Podbean offers recording in both its app and its website using Podbean Live to facilitate recording without having to worry about extraneous software or hardware. The Podbean app has a built-in recorder with tools for editing, allowing you to record, edit, and post to your internal communications podcast straight from your mobile device.
When you want to record with others remotely, you can use the Podbean app for group recording. This is an ideal way to invite a cohost or a guest to your internal communications podcast. You simply give them the link, record right from the phone, and upload to Podbean to publish. You can edit before publishing or publish the recording as is. The system automatically records multiple tracks, for easier editing and improved final sound quality.
3. Releasing Your Content
Once your content has been recorded, the next step is uploading it to your host site so it can be pushed out to your team members and employees. Whether your content is daily, weekly, or monthly, the process largely stays the same.
Uploading your content is as simple as selecting a file to upload and deciding between publishing now, scheduling publication for a future date, or saving it as a draft to later come back and adjust.
The scheduling tool is important in that you can schedule as many episodes ahead of time as you want. If you know that you’re releasing a daily episode at 10AM every day, you can batch record a few episodes ahead of time and schedule them out during the week. This then allows you to make sure your content is going out at the proper time, and gives you the ability to make the most of each time you sit to record.
4. Tracking Engagement
Your user engagement tools are some of the most important podcasting tools at your disposal. These tools not only let you see how often your content has been played, it can further break down who is listening to your internal comms. podcast – and who isn’t. These analytical tools will also give you an idea if there’s any of your content that’s not as engaging as it could be, so you can make adjustments on future episodes.
We’ve further broken down how to analyze this data, and how these analytics play into avoiding the top three pitfalls of internal communications podcasts. By leveraging your analytics, you can adjust your content to properly engage your audience, and make sure that your content is as successful as possible.
Your internal communications podcast is a key tool in remote communication within your company. Not only does it offer you a new way to reach your employees, it gives you a way to track how your employees interact and engage with your content. Click here to learn more about Podbean’s private podcasting tools.
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