The Keys to Creating a Successful Private Business Podcast

By Neil Garrett On Dec 4, 2019

Considering how popular podcasts have become, particularly among millennials, it makes sense that an increasing number of businesses are creating their own podcasts in order to more effectively communicate with and engage employees.

Podcasts are an ideal way to provide much of the information that is usually provided via email or face-to-face meetings. However, simply producing and sending out recordings to workers hardly guarantees a successful podcast. Here are a number of things necessary for an impactful private podcast program.

Engaging Content

This should be obvious: the podcast isn’t going to be successful if it’s boring, disorganized or otherwise low quality. It doesn’t need to be a Grammy-worthy production, but it requires some planning and effort.

Before you begin recording, you need to think critically about what you seek to achieve and the tone you’re trying to convey to workers. Who on staff do you have that is capable of crafting and/or delivering a message that is informative as well as pleasurable to listen to?

Simply asking somebody who would otherwise be writing email memos to conduct voice recordings might not work well. You need to identify people who can do more than read a script.

Convenience

One of the key advantages of podcasts is that your employees can listen to them anytime, anywhere. Or at least they should be able to. It’s critical that your podcasting software allows workers to access the content via their personal digital devices and be Bluetooth-enabled so they can easily tune-in while driving. They should also have the option of streaming the content or downloading and listening off-line.

What all of these options provide is additional flexibility for your employees to integrate key work communications into their schedules in a way that traditional communication modes (face-to-face meetings, emails) don’t allow.

Measurability

There’s no reason to operate in the dark. You have a much better shot at achieving your goals if you are able to analyze how employees are interacting with the content.

For that, you’ll want to pick a platform that allows you to not only see who is listening to the podcasts but one that allows you to create segments within the workforce so that you can measure the impact the podcasts are having on different parts of your audience. It’s essential that you be able to measure at both an individual and a collective level.

Security

If you’re going to use a podcast to communicate with employees, you need to be confident that the content is secure. You don’t want recordings that include sensitive proprietary information to be accessible to competitors. In fact, as is the case with other types of workplace communications, there will occasionally be content you only want certain groups of employees to access.

While podcasting solutions are inherently more secure than email, different platforms offer different levels of security. You should seek out a podcasting solution that allows you to put strong controls over who can access the content. Among other things, you should choose a platform that provides multi-tier verification, which allows your company to restrict log-in access based on its internal business directory.