Interactive Techniques for Inspiring Podcasts in the Middle East
By: Fatima Salahuddinn
The main reason people start the blogging practice of podcasting is because they want to engage a loyal fan base that will always be on the lookout for their next episode. Creating engaging podcast content isn’t a walk in the park, but if you get things right from the outset, then you’re in for the great dividends that come with podcasting. How can the dividends be realized? When your work is genius, you’ll be able to win over some fans. These fans can help you succeed by storming your page every week to watch your next episodes, making positive comments, and sharing your podcasts with their friends.
Follow along with these tips to create inspiring and engaging podcasts!
Talk about things you are interested in
Choosing a topic you like is the cornerstone of podcasting. Apart from the fact that this type of content is engaging, it is also an easy way to release new interesting episodes without running out on what to write. So, if you are an aspiring podcaster and don’t want to struggle in engaging your audience, you may want to create your own technique based on your experience, and share files with your audience. You can make your own projects and keep track of your progress by sending your files to other podcasters, and find out how it is faring with them. The files are usually large, so consider zipping them first to compress the files. When the files get to the audience, they can unzip the files.
Focus on your target audience
It is a well known fact that you can’t please everyone with your work, but at least make sure to be selective with your audience. Narrow your outreach to a particular set of listeners, and make sure you satisfy them every time you drop a new episode. You can research options of topics to work on from some forums or online groups. Make sure these online groups are related to your target audience. Another way to focus on your target audience is to ask your fans directly what they would love to hear, as the majority carries the vote. Once you have this information, you can set about your plan to entertain them, but there will be some questions to ask yourself such as:
- Will it add value to the lives of my listeners?
- Will they sit and listen to the entire episode?
- Will it make them better people in any way?
- Is this the content they are looking for?
If you have positive answers to all of these questions, then you are prepared to send your podcast out.
Invite experts onto your show
There are a number of experts who always grace different niches on podcasts. You can have a considerable fanbase in an instant, once you announce that a well known expert will be on your next show. There could be another expert who is also well known, but your listeners may have grown weary of listening to him/her. In this case, you can get someone else who is not known, but can talk. So, before bringing them onto your platform for the recording, you need to learn some things about them. Do some practicing together to know the kinds of questions to ask your guest. They’re called podcast experts, because they know how to perform on podcasts. You may not be that lively to your fanbase, but you can amass a large number of fans if you continuously bring experts that your audience will be elated to listen to.
Tell your fans where to learn more
In every episode of your podcasts, you need to remember that you can’t fully cover every topic you talk about. Some of your listeners will definitely have questions. You want to make sure that the episode isn’t too long, else some fans would get weary in between. You have an option to provide more sources or links where your audience can learn more if they want to. In doing so, you guide them to the exact page they would find more information on, rather than just handing them the website to search for themselves. For example, if you talked about a recent champions league football match and you want your audience to learn more, you don’t just say, “Visit the UEFA.com website for more on this match.” Instead, you can put it this way, “Visit the UEFA.com website, and under match day 5, you can see all the highlights and reviews of yesterday’s matches.”
Post transcriptions of your podcasts
If you want to gain more fans than you already have, then this is a bonus tip for you. You can include episode transcriptions on your podcasts to optimize it on the search engine. The universal audience for podcasts cannot all tune in to your show, but some of them search online to extract podcasts for a particular niche. If you include transcriptions of yours, they will be able to easily find you. If they find you interesting, you’ll have more fans just by using SEO techniques for your podcasts.
Do you run a podcast show and haven’t been getting the right hits? I know how discouraging it can be to think that you don’t appeal to people. Truth be told, those who are successful podcasters use techniques that you also can adopt. If you’re able to follow some of these tips, and a few others you can find online, then you’ll be preparing yourself for stardom. To be popular online, learn to look for what people want to hear or see, and give it to them.
