Tina Dietz (00:00):

What exactly is corporate internal podcasting, and why should you be paying attention to this rising trend in communications? Hi, I am Tina Dietz, I'm the owner of Twin Flames Studios, partner for the podcasting podcast and your host for this limited edition series. Today, I'll be talking with Jennifer Crawford about the ins and outs of internal podcasting and why it's relevant to corporations, particularly now with an expanding work from home employee base and the need for efficient communication to disperse teams.

Tina Dietz (00:39):

Jennifer is the founder of the podcasting conference, which is coming up this fall of 2020, and also the founder of the DC PodFest conference, which is now in its sixth year. Get ready for a big dose of enthusiasm, mixed with a tremendous amount of information, so that you can find out more about this exciting and rising new medium. Let's get started. Jennifer welcome, and thanks for joining me here today.

Jennifer Crawford (01:04):

Thanks Tina, it's a pleasure to be here.

Tina Dietz (01:07):

I know it's like, you're the one who started this whole conference and this push towards having more information out into the marketplace about internal corporate podcasting, and here I am interviewing you, so haha, the tables have turned.

Jennifer Crawford (01:21):

The tables have turned. Well, I'm so glad you are interviewing me, and you were so generous to volunteer, to spearhead the Podcast Inc Conferences podcast, also called Podcast Inc.

Tina Dietz (01:35):

It's very meta, very meta.

Jennifer Crawford (01:38):

It's very convenient, we don't want people to have to remember too much. But I'm so glad to take advantage of your expertise as both a podcast producer and a vocal leader in our podcasts, so thank you.

Tina Dietz (01:51):

Well, thank you. Well, I'm happy to jump in as I've said many times before, anything with a microphone makes me very happy. So-

Jennifer Crawford (01:59):

I think it's fair to say we're both podcast fans and addicts, so it really makes a lot of sense that we're here together.

Tina Dietz (02:05):

It definitely does. And you and I met through mutual contacts in the She Podcasts community and it was one of those situations where I kept hearing, you need to meet Jennifer Crawford, you need to meet Jennifer Crawford. And it wasn't until I had a networking opportunity with the pioneering collective, and we'll be talking with Tina Chang, the owner of the pioneering collective, about internal communications using podcasting and the importance of communications later in this series. But you came up from DC to New York city and I flew up from Florida to Manhattan and we met basically at a dinner networking event with a combination of all kinds of corporate leaders who were interested in finding out more about podcasting and that was a full room, and a really interesting event. So I'm really glad we got to meet there and then the conversation just continued about this fantastic event that you have putting together.

Tina Dietz (03:00):

And I was also curious to talk, before we get into talking specifically about Podcast Inc. You have a deep background in creating other events and working in the podcast industry, so give us a little bit of your kind of superhero origin story of what led you to create Podcast Inc?

Jennifer Crawford (03:19):

Yeah, sure. So with the event history, it goes back to 2015, I had been a podcaster and like a lot of independent podcasters, I was doing it out of my home, I was feeling a little isolated and lonely and at that time podcasting was far from mainstream. So here I was doing this thing, I had been podcasting for several years and I realized that I was really craving the connection of a community, I wanted to talk to other people doing this weird quirky thing called podcasting.

Jennifer Crawford (03:57):

So that led me to looking for events in the DC area where I live, and I discovered that there weren't any meetups, there were no conferences, and being of an entrepreneurial nature, of course, it was just natural to say, well, I will create a conference. And honestly, it wasn't a very bright move because creating a conference is really difficult as I found out, but that's where DC PodFest was born, and now we're approaching our sixth year, the year of the pandemic. So we are typically in November, we're scheduled for the weekend of November sixth through the eighth. We may be pivoting to a virtual event, we're going to just kind of see what happens there.

Jennifer Crawford (04:40):

Podcast Inc came about because I had the opportunity to take a detour and work very closely with Podbean, a podcast hosting company. They were really the first ones to the field to answer the needs of corporations, looking to provide podcasts for their workforce as a way to improve their internal communications, but they had this unique need of, needing that content to be privatized. Privatized and efficiently delivered, so the user experience mimicked that of listening to any other podcast out in the public stratosphere. So Podbean developed a really great platform to answer those needs, and I was able to work directly with their corporate customers in setting up their internal podcasting platforms.

Jennifer Crawford (05:35):

Through that experience, I got really enamored with the application of internal podcasting because it really accomplishes so much within the corporate environment in terms of not only making internal communications more efficient, but because podcasting is so intimate, there are so many ways that they can be used to improve or maintain a corporate culture, improve sales, training, onboarding, all sorts of internal communication applications in terms of leadership training, company news, it can replace the company newsletter that we all know nobody is reading anymore.

Tina Dietz (06:17):

Completely.

Jennifer Crawford (06:18):

So I got so excited about it, but what was frustrating me is that nobody was really talking about internal podcasting because it really was kind of new. Podbean launched their platform, I think late in 2017 if I'm not mistaken. And because the content is privatized by nature, it's not searchable or discoverable, nobody really knew that these large fortune 500 companies, fortune 100 companies were utilizing this medium within their organization, so it frustrated me that nobody knew about it and that so many companies could benefit from it. So that's where much like DC PodFest, Podcast Inc was born out of my frustration of finding people to tell about this amazing communications paradigm.

Tina Dietz (07:11):

Well, it's funny how many entrepreneurial ventures are born out of a sense of frustration and being a lifelong entrepreneur myself and worked with many dozens if not hundreds of entrepreneurs over the years, I think that's a key point for everything we do. The other thing that I think is fascinating about the way that you run conferences, is you referred to them as micro conferences and they're all one day long, is this one or two days long, is that it?

Jennifer Crawford (07:38):

It really depends. DC PodFest is a Friday through Sunday event this year, if it ends up being in person. I define micro conferences personally as 200 attendees or less, there are other definitions, there's no Webster definition, I don't think, but I prefer personally attending smaller conferences. And as a solo producer with a small team, to put on these conferences, for me they're just a little easier to put on and a little less risky. To keep them small I'm able to produce something that I think is a little more creative because I don't have to be in a hotel, typical conference environment, I can be in sort of these interesting venues that I think make things a little bit more fun. So yeah, I specialize I suppose in the micro conferences, so yeah.

Tina Dietz (08:36):

I can relate to that. It can be very overstimulating to be an extremely large conference. And truly the benefit, I know you and I both agree on this, of conferences is, yes, the content and is important, but it is the interaction and it is the relationships that come out of those conferences and the networking that happens in an inside them. The way that you strategically put your conferences together with things I really love is that, the relationships that come out of that are wonderful and that's one of the reasons. Besides the fact that I'm involved with it, I would have attended the conference anyway, even if I weren't speaking at it, that I'm looking to Podcast Inc, regardless if it is a life event in DC in December, just before the DC PodFest, or if it ends up continuing to be alive event, which I'm still kind of gone in for, because I think by that time in the year, we're all going to be ready to really be able to shake hands again, I know I'm looking forward to that very much myself, for sure.

Jennifer Crawford (09:39):

Yeah. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but we will ultimately make the decision based on safety. If everyone can come and be in the same room together and I don't have to stay up all night wondering if somebody is getting sick, then we can do an in-person conference, but there're some benefits to a virtual conference too, so I'm okay either way, we'll probably make the call, I'm thinking by the end of July, we'll decide.

Tina Dietz (10:04):

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I know that the plans that we have in place or you have in place for, the networking aspect being virtual or live either way, it's going to be extraordinarily valuable. And perhaps even the virtual event will allow us to, side of things, a virtual component anyway, we can definitely reach as many people as possible who are living in kind of very, very busy circumstances with being corporate executives and things like that. And I know with the corporate executives and companies that I work with time is always a premium, but there has been such a deep interest in podcasting, both external, internal, as well as podcast guesting particularly for senior executives, the interest in it has been growing and growing and growing. So this is a really good time, particularly with all the pivoting and shifting that folks are doing to more online work, more online communications, we're really seeing a lot of opportunity for diving into some innovative ways of communication, and this is where internal podcasting completely shines.

Tina Dietz (11:16):

It is I believe, probably the most cost-effective way and efficient way to reach a workforce, to reach an entire company's worth of teams, in a way that can serve the internal culture, the communications, the talent retention and management, the innovation and all of these things, it goes so far beyond the company newsletter, in so many ways. And that's what really excites me the most because what gets me up and going in the morning is human connection and human communication, and particularly specializing in vocal leadership like I do, we have an opportunity here to reach people in a way that is unprecedented, in the realm of large corporate communications.

Jennifer Crawford (12:04):

That's absolutely true. And I'm equally enthusiastic, particularly because as you mentioned, we're in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, but there are things that are going to last beyond the period of this pandemic, well long afterwards. So, and I think one of those is this expanded remote workforce, right? So we have people now that are working from home full time that haven't previously done that, and I think they're probably getting pretty accustomed to it. It used to be for a lot of companies working from home was a benefit, maybe you got to work from home a couple of days a week as part of your benefits package, but now it's going to be the norm for a lot of people.

Jennifer Crawford (12:51):

And I think there are a lot of benefits for companies moving to a remote workforce personally, but I also think there are some challenges. And I think one of those challenges is maintaining a cohesive culture, communicating efficiently, making sure that your remote workforce still feels part of something bigger than themselves, and they're still engaged with your purpose within the company. And podcasting, particularly internal podcasting really can be that adhesive, that holds that culture together, through really intimate, efficient, almost real time communication. So yeah, you make a great point, Tina. I don't know how anybody can not be excited about internal podcasting, honestly. Because like you said, it is fairly cost-effective and not that difficult to implement.

Tina Dietz (13:51):

No, certainly much simpler and lighter to implement than video. And I do have so many colleagues who get a little nervous, who we're in the video space and say, well, but video, but video. And I'd like to actually talk about this for a few minutes, if we could, as we create this context for what internal podcasting is, what it is and how it gets used, because this is one of the first things that I have been running into and in conversations with folks is this conversation about video. And I just want to be clear upfront, that just because we're talking about internal podcasting as a highly effective medium, it doesn't mean you don't use video. There is a space and a place for all of these things, it's like all God's creatures, great and small, all marketing mediums, great and small, are really wonderful, but it's a matter of what you use and where you use it.

Tina Dietz (14:47):

So for example, we're finding that and the research that, video people they tune out after about two minutes. We are on our screens so many hours in a day, and even with the influx of additional video calls... You and I have been running our businesses remotely since the inception, we've been working online and remotely, I know for myself, it's well over a dozen years now. So with all of the shifting to working from home, it wasn't that big of a shift for us, but it is a big shift for a lot of people. And it's funny because I'm seeing so many more video calls now than I even did a month or two ago. I've been joking on some of these calls, that I've been so many Zoom calls, I'm beginning to question the existence of the lower half of my body.

Jennifer Crawford (15:38):

And I know exactly what you mean. I definitely got Zoom fatigue or I get Zoom fatigue I should say, weekly. So I really had to intentionally block off my calendar and have no Zoom days, so I can kind of recharge.

Tina Dietz (15:53):

Yeah, me too.

Jennifer Crawford (15:54):

It's a problem.

Tina Dietz (15:56):

But you would never use video for long-form delivery of content, people will not watch it, they will not watch it, it's one of those things. But the average length of people watching, excuse me, of listening to a podcast is 20 minutes or longer. And you can deliver a tremendous amount of value and a tremendous amount of information in 20 minutes. This is largely because you don't have to stare at a screen in order to listen to a podcast, it is inherently mobile. You can listen to it from anywhere and that's one of the lovely things about some of these platforms, Podbean, Libsyn, Blubrry, that are now offering internal podcasting is that, it can be up based as well as extremely private for these companies that need that extreme privacy.

Jennifer Crawford (16:44):

Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, it doesn't have to be an either or situation, it can be an AND, you can have audio content and video content very easily, even internally actually. Podbean does offer internal video, I'm not sure about Blubrry because their platform is about to launch pretty soon. I don't know if they'll do a launch by the time this-

Tina Dietz (17:07):

Will find out, yeah.

Jennifer Crawford (17:07):

... podcast comes out, but we'll find out. But by the way, they are a Podcast Inc sponsor, we're very glad to have them. Thank you Blubrry! But I agree completely when you said there's sort of a time and place for both, right? So the nice thing that I was hearing from companies when I was working with them about setting up their internal media platforms is that, they were very concerned with safety, right? So the audio format of podcasts, they didn't have to worry about people in the field traveling, people that worked in the field, they didn't have to worry about the safety issue of them being distracted, listening to internal content while they were in the car traveling, right? Where with a video, they were concerned that if it was in a video format, they might be tempted to look away from the road and there would be some safety issues.

Jennifer Crawford (18:02):

But then we had some other clients, who had products where they needed to demo them and talk about their features and that sort of thing, and so the video was really important to them because they could record the actual product demo to their sales teams before they went out on any sort of... Or on got on any sort of sales calls. So it really depends, but I think we saw definitely a predominance of interest in internal audio content because of its flexibility, portability, the ability to listen to the content while their workforce were doing other things. So taking advantage of that windshield time or any other time that would normally be unproductive or less productive, even if it's just walking the dog, you could also be listening to your company updates for the week. So yeah, there's a lot of application there and a lot of reasons that people are being drawn to the audio format.

Tina Dietz (19:11):

Yeah. In this series, we're going to be diving deeper into a lot of what you were just saying, Jennifer, how do you actually set up the... What is the technical side of things and what do you need to know to be able to produce an internal podcast, in terms of personnel, and time, and all of those things before you even get started. We'll be talking about the type of content that you develop for internal podcasting. There are far more options for developing internal content than you may realize, it's not just bullets and reports and a message from the CEO, and that's very exciting that we'll be talking about in far more depth.

Tina Dietz (19:53):

We'll be talking about some of the metrics of internal podcasting and the safety issues, the compliance, all of that good stuff. And the different ways that podcasts are a benefit to a workforce, whether it is mobile or in place, whether it is global or centered in one location, some really fascinating pieces of information and case studies and our different speakers who come from all the different backgrounds, we'll be discussing as we go through this entire series. So I'm very excited for us to be getting this out into the world and very excited also to get some feedback from folks.

Tina Dietz (20:32):

So if anybody has questions about the content that we are getting out there and also about the Podcast Inc conference, I encourage you to go to podcastinc.co, that's not .com, it's .co, podcastinc.co, to find out more information about the conference. And also, if somebody wanted to reach out to us with questions or more inquiries, Jennifer, what's the best way for folks to reach you?

Jennifer Crawford (21:01):

They can reach me, it's [email protected] CO.

Tina Dietz (21:07):

All right. Perfect. That makes it easy for everyone. So if you've got questions or even if you have a question that wasn't covered on one of the episodes that we've got here and you want it answered, reach out to us and we'll make sure that either Jennifer or myself or one of our speakers, gets back to you with the answer that you're looking for, for all of that. And this is a collaborative effort podcast, Jennifer and her team at Podcast Inc, with Heartcast Media, who was our production sponsor for the show, my company Twin Flames Studios, another sponsor there. And anyone else that I missed Jennifer?

Jennifer Crawford (21:48):

I think you covered everything quite well, Tina. Thank you.

Tina Dietz (21:50):

Okay. Excellent, that's what we do. Make sure everything gets handled for everyone. So let's... Okay, I'm just going to pause here. What else do we want to cover? I'm going to pause the recording.

Tina Dietz (22:07):

So I know that some of you out there, have on your mind a really big question because Jennifer and I get asked this all the time, and this is going back to talking about the metrics and the data of internal podcasting. And this is one of the things that makes internal podcasting so exciting. So Jennifer, with your experience with platforms like Podbean, what was the user experience or the company's experience being able to find out more about the data that was being provided to them and that kind of reporting?

Jennifer Crawford (22:41):

Yeah. I'm glad you brought it up because that is something that was really attractive to internal podcasting customers. So because the content with an internal podcast lives on a closed ecosystem typically, so that would be a hosting platform like Blubrry or Podbean. We are able or the platform is able to deliver user-level stats, so they can tell you how each employee has engaged with each piece of content. So you get really valuable insights such as how long they've listened, if they've repeated a portion of content, if they have skipped over any portion of the content. And so that's great because you can take that data and correlate it to the success of sales initiatives, onboarding, training programs, you can also just use it to gauge the quality of the actual content.

Jennifer Crawford (23:39):

I think you touched on this earlier, Tina, even though it's a corporate podcast, it really can't be boring. The same rules apply to internal podcasts as external podcasts, that you still need to make it interesting in order to encourage people to want to consume the content and you also have to market it. So you're marketing it to a very specific customer base that you know very well and intimately, so they're easy to find, but you still have to encourage them to listen and tease them, have teaser content and maybe solicit feedback on how they like the content, or allow maybe a discussion, or a listening party, there are a lot of things you can do. And I think that's one of the topics of a speaker is covering during Podcast Inc.

Jennifer Crawford (24:29):

But yeah, the analytics are so important. You can't get this type of data from a typical marketing effort or internal communication efforts. So even with a newsletter, you may be able to get an open rate, but you don't necessarily know how much of that content they've consumed. So-

Tina Dietz (24:51):

That is very true.

Jennifer Crawford (24:52):

... this is, I mean data rules, because once you have that sort of intelligence, well then you can act on it, you can improve that content, you can improve your training or sales programs, you can reward people that have completed their training or move them onto the next step of their onboarding process based on their consumption, so there's a lot you can do with that data, I guess is the point. So yeah, it is.

Tina Dietz (25:21):

And we've seen from so many of the recent studies, the state of the global workforce studies that were done by Gallup, many other smaller studies that have been done domestically and internationally that the two biggest issues that workplaces are dealing with right now, are engagement of employees and management actually acting as managers. And this is where podcasting can really make a difference in training, in engagement. There's some data we'll be sharing with you throughout the podcast about certain case studies and different companies that have experienced higher levels of engagement, and I'm much more... Their talent retention is even pointing to their ability to deliver information through podcasting because of the relationship that it develops and that it offers between high-level management, the vision of the company and people who were kind of on the front lines, in all different departments, because it allows people from all different facets of a company to contribute to content and to innovation through the podcast and content. So we're very excited to share with you a lot more as we go through this series. And Jennifer, any closing thoughts as we wrap up here?

Jennifer Crawford (26:43):

No. I just think that... I'm hoping this series will encourage companies to consider an internal podcast, as you mentioned. Retaining your top talent has nothing to do with what they're getting paid anymore. People are looking to work for companies that they can stand behind, that they believe in, they're looking for meaningful work, and it's the unengaged employee that you lose, that's the employee that walks out the door. An employee that is engaged with the inner workings of the company that feels part of something, they feel their voice is heard, and understands the mission of the company that they're working for, is going to be an employee that stays with you. So I think that talent retention is so important to companies because that costs them in the billions of dollars each year, trying to keep top talent retained. So yeah, if you're not considering internal podcasting, I think you're really missing the boat and your company can choose to be innovative now or behind the times very quickly.

Tina Dietz (27:51):

Very, very quickly. And the good news is that internal podcasting isn't one of those things that is going to take a tremendous amount of technology, it's not going to take a tremendous amount of financial investment, and it dovetails beautifully with a number of the other communication structures the companies already have in place, so yay, all the way around.

Tina Dietz (28:12):

And as I said, stay tuned for all of the content that we have for you. I would hope that you would even kind of binge out this content for yourself, maybe take notes, and get back to us with any questions you have. You can reach Jennifer directly, at [email protected] and you can find out more about the podcast and conference at podcastinc.co. I'm Tina Dietz from Twin Flame Studios, your host here for the series, and will see you virtually, in our next episode as we get into all of the data, the storytelling and the intricacies of internal podcasting for business and corporations on the podcasting podcast. Thanks for joining us.