Podcast Maps by Graham Brown

So just how big is the podcast market today? If you want to understand the podcast market today, we have to understand it through the lens of people. There is no more authentic medium. There is no better way to build authority and what better way for you, your brand and your brand leaders to grow an audience of people that care about the conversations that matter to them? There are 2 million podcasts in the world today. That's the number of websites there were back in 1998. The latest statistics show that we now have 1.7. Billion websites.

Purely from back of envelope estimates, there are 1 million podcast hosts in the world and those podcasts hosts have spoken to 50 million people. Let's think about podcasting from the perspective of the people who listen to podcasts. If you look at the data there are 1 billion people listening to podcasts every week. The COVID 19 pandemic has done a lot to put podcasts on the agenda both for us as listeners, but also as a valid option now for businesses. Consider that a lot of what we used to do in the world of traditional corporate communications from press releases analyst lunches to breakfast briefings to business events are no longer effective options.

According to the latest Edelman PR trust report, people want CEOs to speak out. What are their views on diversity? What are their views on climate change? In many ways, these very personal conversations define our experience of brands today.

The question has always been for corporate leaders and communications heads. How do you do that? Both in an authentic manner and a scale. Because the most valuable assets in any organization, i.e the people, the leaders don't scale by their very nature. We all know the power of an informal coffee meeting. That's where deals are done. However, you can't scale that kind of intimacy and by contrast the press release or the social media tweet don't offer the bandwidth, the engagement or the level of scale that we need as brands to reach the people that matter most. That's why podcasts offered the rare combination of both authenticity and scale.

I encourage my clients to think of their podcast as like a coffee conversation at scale. So back to those 2 million podcast, should your brand also have a podcast? Consider your branded podcast as a communication interface for the leaders of your organization. Much in the same way that the websites in the early days provided a more effective communication interface for consumers and the brand. It was far more efficient to go to the website, order a product, find the store opening hours or send an email than phoning up the switchboard or reading news articles to find out more about the company or going to the store to find out it was shut.

Your branded podcast too, provides a better way for your partners, your network and your clients to understand more about the people behind the brand. What do they care about? What are their views on different subjects and what is their journey within the organization? These conversations, both humanize and define brands today. Because people follow people, not brands.

Welcome back to podcast maps. This episode is all about growing podcast audiences. You might be a podcast host. You might be a podcast agency. One thing you're probably experiencing today that shares all of the above is the difficulty in growing an audience. There's reasons for that. You can listen to my previous episodes of podcast maps to see how technically the algorithms have changed or Spotify on apple. Covered in this episode of Podcast Maps: Audience numbers quality or quantity?, Guest sharing strategies, Dungeons and Dragons podcasts, Taylor Swift, The Thought Leadership Magic Quadrant and what happens to Tik Tok stars after they become famous.

The first sense we ever experienced was the sound of another human's heartbeat. Audio is the root of all connection. And this is the same of brand communication as it is for human beings. Video may be exciting and shiny, but you're competing with an army of teenagers who work harder, longer and get more viewers than brands ever will. But what your average 15 year old kid can't do is bring a wealth of experience, connection and conversation to the table. That's why when it comes to thought leadership and business development, audio wins hands down.

Vox Populi Vox Dei - the voice of the people is the voice of God. We can learn a lot from radio. Radio can teach us what Audio 2.0 needs to do next.

The first ever "Radio Phone in” took place in London 100 years. The industry first by BBC Radio was so popular that the Post Office (who then controlled the airwaves) had to step in and shut it down.

My point is that Radio has been doing Community for 100 years. Specifically building community. In this episode I discuss what radio does so well - being part of and including the listener. I also share example of podcasts that do this very well - e.g. Cold War Conversations and Dungeons and Daddies.

To understand Audio 2.0, think of the industry as Music in the pre-digital era. You needed Property (the songs) and you needed Air Play to promote the songs. Pre-Spotify and iTunes these entities would be:

Property - the Music catalogue

Air Play - Radio

Today, we can see a similar model emerge.

Property - Podcasts

Air Play - Clubhouse, Linkedin Live, Telegram Groups, Whatsapp Groups, Facebook Groups, Discord, Twitter Spaces etc

Now, what's important for us to understand here is that creating a Podcast and pushing out a few social media "audiogram” highlights or Tweets ain't gonna cut it anymore. To succeed, you need to build Community with Air Play.

You need to create Social Space…

If we want to realise Audio 2.0's full potential, every audio content owner must also create a COMMUNITY around her property. The rules of the game are evolving. See my Linkedin post this week on the comparison of podcasts 2016 vs 2021.

I was surprised to learn that Cassette Tapes are enjoying a renaissance, due in part to the reality of our disconnected lives. Tapes have always been core to connection and sharing. (In 1989 tapes sold 83 million units a year in the UK).

https://scroll.in/article/990384/audio-cassettes-are-a-bit-rubbish-so-why-did-their-sales-doubled-during-the-pandemic

Remember the word COMMUNITY comes from the Latin COMMUNICAT which means "to share”. What we were doing with cassette tapes 30 or 40 years ago, we are now doing on Clubhouse and Podcasts. Too often technologists try to force people to adopt new behaviors, an approach that fails. If there's something we need to learn from the rise and fall and rise of Cassette tapes it's this - OLD behaviors NEW technologies. Those behaviors are primarily rooted in SHARING. Both the sharing of audio and the shared experience created by audio.

Orson Welles rose to notoriety with his broadcast of War of the Worlds in 1938. Legend has it, his realistic broadcast complete with news alert, brought offices and drivers to a standstill, shocked that Mars was indeed invading America. The broadcast aired during a perfect storm of factors: on the one hand a backdrop of foreboding with the rise of Hitler in Europe and on the other the emergence of the modern industrial consumer who turned to mass media for information and connection.

Fast forward to 2021 and the latest data from the Infinite Dial report in Australia shows us how weekly podcast listening grew 53% over a period of 12 months (the last report being polled pre-Covid lockdown). https://www.adnews.com.au/news/digital-audio-continues-to-climb-with-podcast-listening-up-37

Michael Stelzner, the CEO of Social Media Examiner, explains why audio is filling a void left by the disconnection we feel from this unprecedented era in history, "the pandemic has made so many of us yearn for real, live conversations and Clubhouse brings a unique dynamic by adding social elements to it.” - source Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/cathyhackl/2021/02/05/community-is-at-the-heart-of-social-audio-with-clubhouse

Tokyo and Shanghai combined have 73 million people. That's more people in 2 cities than the population of California and Texas combined. So many people, so little space. Many of these 73 million people came from outside the city, uprooted from their local communities. It's no coincidence that they have the largest and most profitable Starbucks stores in the world. Not because Starbucks sells coffee, but they sell what people need during times of massive disruption - spaces to connect.

In this article from Unified Communications, the author writes that, "Everyone's talking about Audio Spaces right now”. Clubhouse, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Reddit, Discord and Podcasts are all forms of Social Space reimagined for the world of audio. To the question of who will win long term, this is perhaps best answered not by me, but by the ones who have driven communication technology for the last 20 years - teenagers.

This year Elon Musk and Clubhouse burst onto the scene. The Google Trends data on Clubhouse speaks volumes about the hype.

After Clubhouse comes Linkedin, Reddit, Facebook and Twitter. Then there's Discord, of course, the audio first dark horse app hit chugs away in the background with 120 million users. (a more detailed trend comparison of Clubhouse vs Discord)

And Podcasts. 1 Billion Weekly Listeners.

All of this is not going without Mainstream attention. Washington Post this week wrote an article headlined: Video is so 2020. Now Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are going all in on audio.

Why?

Audio 2.0 is on the rise in 2021 because of 2021, not as a coincidence. 2021 has been one of the most disconnected eras of our modern history and with that we have collectively sought out ways to connect. If we consider disconnection as the pain point of the modern consumer, we as audio professionals need to deliver. This means a) acknowledging that the core power of audio is connection and b) building connection into our audio content.

If there's one thing we've learned that makes us happy from its absence in the last 18 months - it's Community. More than anything, we crave the contact of other people. That's why Audio is enjoying a resurgence. It's audio's ability to connect and create community that we are attracted to.

In Season 3 of Podcast Maps I discuss the backstory to the rise of Audio 2.0 and share examples of how technologies and audio content creators and engaging communities. I hope this helps you see audio for what it really can be - not as another content channel but as a powerful medium for us to create authentic connection in a very disconnected era.

In this episode of Season 2 Podcast Maps we'll look at the analytics tools you can use to find your podcast ranking. We built our own Podcast Analytics tool called Podminer which ranks 90,000 podcasts in the business category. Critical to your podcast ranking are several Podcast SEO meta factors including your choice of category (see How to Choose Podcast Category), Podcast Cadence (see how often should I publish my podcast episodes? and audio length (see How long should a podcast episode be?). If you have questions, queries and feedback about Podcast SEO add Graham Brown on Linkedin