Your internal communications podcast can be one of your most effective tools to deliver key company information, highlight employees, and distribute internal training across your company. However, you may find that your employees’ engagement with your podcast is not what you’d hoped. Here are three potential challenges as to why your internal podcast may not be reaching your goals. We also provide three solutions that can help get employees to tune into your podcast.
1. Are Your Employees Listening To Your Podcast?
Challenge: While you may have some employee engagement and listener retention, you’re finding the podcast’s listenership still falling short.
Solution: Your podcast needs an internal marketing plan. How are you getting the word out and creating excitement about the podcast? In what ways is the podcast being promoted as part of your overall communications strategy? Are employees aware and shown how simple it is to get the content? Do they know why the podcast will be useful to them and save them time?
Here are some methods companies have used to be sure the podcast is promoted and accessible to employees:
Ensure that push notifications are enabled on your employees’ mobile devices. This will alert your employees when a new episode is published. Many internal podcasts are also shared via internal emails with a link to the podcast episode(s). Also, take advantage of scannable QR codes that will take employees right to the latest podcast episode.
Your podcast also has a place within your meetings. Refer to your podcast or to topics mentioned in the podcast during meetings or in emails. Make a point of showing positive affirmation to employees who bring up your podcast without prompting. Offer incentives based around listening and sharing news about your internal communications podcast.
Frequently advertise your podcast in places where your employees tend to congregate, such as physical signage in break rooms and around the office. Don’t be afraid to get creative! Host employee get-togethers to celebrate episodes being launched. Utilize your current listeners by inviting them to be podcast ambassadors to spread the word.
By bringing more attention to the episodes you’re publishing, more employees will tune in and listen. Once word gets around, your podcast will often become your most popular communications channel.
2. Is Your Content Engaging Enough To Foster Listener Retention?
Challenge: Your employees are accessing the episodes, but your analytics indicate that their engagement with your content is low.
Solution: In order to gain and retain listeners, you have to design and cultivate your content with your employees’ workflow and focuses in mind. We discussed in a previous article that when creating a successful internal communications podcast, it’s important to consider various points, including:
- Is our podcast replacing or supplementing an existing communications channel?
- Is our podcast revisiting previously shared information?
- How does the podcast make work life easier for the employee or provide something unique?
- Are our podcasts being segmented to the proper teams in our company?
- How concise and focused is the content delivery in our episodes?
Always review your content and ensure that it stays relevant and concise. Consider getting feedback from employees who are listening. Ask teams what they need and how they prefer the podcast content to be delivered. Look at your listener engagement intel to analyze patterns and make adjustments. Perhaps listeners are skipping certain segments or dropping off at a certain time. This can tell you a lot about how to make content more appealing. Remember that you can always create more content around a specific topic, so shorter targeted episodes speaking about a bigger topic may lead to deeper podcast engagement.
3. Is Your Content Organized and Unified?
Challenge: You find that your content is not unified or formatted the same way throughout your episodes, creating a disorganized listening experience for your employees. Also, every piece of content is being shared with every employee, which may be overwhelming to your listeners.
Solution: Do you have a team allotted to podcast production and a plan for producing and distributing your podcasts? It is vital to allocate tasks for the podcast and have an overall plan for the consistency of the content. The podcast plan should stem from the goals…the reason(s) your company wanted to do a podcast. This helps form the structure for your podcast(s), as well as timing, content segmentation (who needs to get which podcasts) and more.
By designating your teams and time allotment for production, you can regulate the presentation of your episodes. Consistency in how your internal communications podcast is presented (as well as the release time) sets expectations for your listeners. This, in turn, will lead to your employees coming back for new episodes and making the podcast part of their routine. By having content targeted to the right listeners and complementary to other communication tools, you demonstrate this is something worth employees’ time.
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You’ve put a lot of work into your internal communications podcast. By taking these steps, you can ensure that your internal podcast reaches the most ears, keeps them engaged, and has them returning for the next bit of your company’s content.
Learn more about Podbean’s internal podcasts solutions by clicking here.
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