Sam Birkett 0:06
Hello everyone, welcome once again to Marketing Meanders with Sally and Sam and today, funnily enough, we are talking about what we're doing right now to a certain degree so this is a discussion of podcasts and podcasting and I mean, we've all witnessed the rise of podcasts in the last few years, but in particular COVID seems to have accelerated that to a certain degree, I would say. We are, funnily enough, we will touch on this later on, we'll we're certainly going to interview someone who's supporting our podcast, Matt Eastland-Jones, who is Story Ninety-Four, and we'll come back to him later on. But we have been doing this for gosh, how long is it now Sally?

Sally Green 0:56
I know, I can't quite believe, I think it's getting close to 2+ years.

Sam Birkett 1:01
Is that right? Good grief!

Sally Green 1:03
It's a very long time.

Sam Birkett 1:05
Yes, it has been quite a long time and it's something which I mean, you know, our expertise of this only runs as far as actually recording these podcasts and then other people are more proficient in terms of the technicalities and obviously, we can help with promotion, of course, but really what we wanted to today was talk about, you know, why have podcasts become so popular and how can they help us? Also, looking at it from, I suppose, the perspective in particular, of, you know, perhaps the freelancers or the smaller outfits out there, rather than the big, you know, studios or bigger companies. So I thought just kick off with that, really Sally. So why have podcasts become so popular?

Sally Green 1:49
I think it's interesting that you say they picked up during lockdown because I think part of podcasts is actually being able to see somebody and hear somebody speaking inside your head. So if people do film their podcasts, you can actually see them, but actually just hearing them in headphones, talking to you, is really very comforting and you know, when we were all alone, sitting at home getting depressed, it was nice to having that. So that was the kind of personal side of it. It's nice. But actually, I think that it's a really easy way to take in a lot of information. If you had to read everything that you and I chit-chat about, it would take forever, it would take a lot of time, it'd be slightly less engaging, you'd probably feel required to take notes, and you'd feel you were reading a textbook. But actually, you're getting a lot of information quite quickly in a podcast. You're also getting somebody's passion and that passion is very addictive and you think God, they like that they can do that, I could do that as well, I feel the same kind of passion and I think that's why they work because you get inside people's head.

Sam Birkett 2:59
Yeah, absolutely and as you say, I mean, I think alluding to the particular rise, I mean, because there's some people, some of my friends, I think I was trying to remember back to when I first heard the term podcast, which was many years ago, but I mean, and I think there were certain people who were sort of aficionados of particular podcasts, or just you know, podcasts in general, they like to go out and sample them like going to the bookshop and picking out a particularly nice novel by somebody, but I suppose going back to something which is, you know, Conan Doyle or Dickens, there's a serial aspect, isn't there...

Sally Green 3:31
Yeah, that's a good point.

Sam Birkett 3:33
you've got this source of your ongoing relationship, what must you say the personal touch, I mean, certainly from speaking from personal perspective, again, from the lockdown the pandemic, I distinctly remember, I think my points of light in the darkness, where I remember doing kind of gardening as probably a lot of us did and having my headphones in and listening to podcasts, and radio shows, things like that. I mean, I've always been an avid listener. I love radio, I love radio shows. So I suppose I was already going to be someone who was prone to podcasts or listening to them. But I hadn't actually up until 2020, I suppose, thereabouts really followed a regular podcast of any sort and my sister did a lot for sports and things. She's always, you know, saying, Oh, check this out, check that out. But I never really got into anything. But once I, once you have that opportunity to say, well, you know, I'm happy to listen to something and get on with other things at the same time, as you say, taken a lot of information. whilst listening. My brain is one of the ones that's wired, I suppose quite well for that, unlike some people who are more visual, but it is that, I suppose we might get to his sort, there is that sense of the serial and the relationship you build with the podcasters.

Sally Green 4:49
Oh completely, and it's like inviting them in for tea in a way they're very, very close to you and you almost feel as if you could go no, that's not right or oh yeses, I think that, you are having a conversation with you, even though it's one-sided. So you feel part of the discussion and so you can actually go out and I often listen to a podcast and then go and talk to other people about it and say, do you think this was... I heard someone today saying X, Y, Z. So in a way, it's a bit like going to the pub for a chat. It's just that you're not necessarily part of the conversation until you've taken the conversation elsewhere and I think it's got a lot of reach, there's a lot of reach in podcasts, you are reaching people who you might never reach in any other marketing way, might you, you can reach not just the people that are listening, but the people who then talk about what you were saying. So it's got lots of reach, and if it's international, so it's nice international reach, potentially. But it's, I think it's exciting. You're talking to one hell of a lot of people.

Sam Birkett 5:51
Yeah, absolutely and it's, I mean, it's something I was gonna come to in a few minutes, I suppose, which was looking at the actual marketing usage of them, you know, from a professional company perspective, which I will definitely come to

Sally Green 6:06
Dragged us round the corner to early sorry.

Sam Birkett 6:08
No, no, this is the meander. No, no, I will come to that. We'll come to that in a little bit. But as you said, I was just focusing on because this most important thing really is like, who were the audiences and what their motivations for listening to podcasts in general, as you say, and I think that that, probably that acceleration may not, you know, if I was properly prepared, I'd have some fantastic statistic to share now saying that the podcast uptake in X country has increased by da-da-da, I'm afraid this is more anecdotal, but things I've heard of, and obviously, we've all seen, I mean, it's been one of the stories of lockdown, hasn't it, around the fact that more people are listening, and probably, therefore, more people are producing podcasts. But it kind of it's interesting, it almost reminds me of the Disney film Ratatouille where the central... I'll get there, this is an interesting connection, where the central connection is to do with central points the story about the fact that you know, anybody can cook and even a rat, of course, can cook well, obviously, of course a rat can cook!

Sally Green 7:08
What are you talking about? Of course, we all know that!

Sam Birkett 7:11
Yeah. It's a natural conclusion. But the debate around this, this phrase of you know, anyone can cook and also around whether anyone should cook or you know, can fine dining or can fine cuisine come from anywhere, or should it come from everywhere? That's kind of playing around with wording. So we're podcasts, it's almost like, anyone can podcast. Should everyone podcast?

Sally Green 7:37
Well, we've all listened to podcasts, which should never have been recorded, or I've definitely got 10 seconds in and thought, I don't like your voice actually and so it really does matter what people sound like and it's a kind of it's like as you say the cooking metaphor. I don't you know, there's too much pepper in this or there's too much chilli, you're, I don't like this and voices like that some people's voices you just don't like and whatever they're saying you're never gonna like it.

Sam Birkett 8:08
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting is that because I, I think I'm against linking back to the pandemic, there's probably a number of people who because I when we started actually I looked into some statistics at the time was prepared a bit looking at...

Sally Green 8:21
Well done Sam.

Sam Birkett 8:22
Ahh, it's amazing isn't it, actually did some work! Around, you know, motivations for why you'd want to start and then obviously, the technical side, and we are hopefully going through a process of you know, improving our technical output.

Sally Green 8:37
Scaling up.

Sam Birkett 8:38
Scaling up exactly and so getting to a point where obviously, people can actually hear you, you're not getting interruptions and it's just smooth, but then again, I mean, more round the motivation for it, I suppose. Because I would imagine a lot of people when the pandemic hit, you know, perhaps they were listening to more podcasts, but also thought, oh, that's an idea. Maybe I should do something. But there was this pressure, almost, as I said, about the serial aspect, I suppose certain people think, oh, gosh, well, if I start this, when do I finish, I have to now continue. But I was looking into it in the amount of times that people actually say, Well, no, we're doing a series. But it doesn't mean we're going to have it regularly, every week, every month, and we're not gonna go on on open-ended, we're talking about a particular subject. We're exploring that from three different angles, and then wrapping up, and it's a four-part series or whatever it might be. I mean, there's immense freedom out there and I think again, it's then you're looking at well, as you say, look, connecting with the passion of what you want to say, who you want to talk to, and then why, who you're doing that for I suppose the thing because I mean, I think when you start you sort of think Well, gosh, who's going to listen to this? Who's it relevant for? And it is all part of that. Like any marketing campaign.

Sally Green 9:50
Any marketing plan, you've just described how to set it exactly like that. Who's it for? What's it, how long are we going to do it for? How is it going to help us? You've just described exactly what a podcast is, it's a bit of marketing collateral.

Sam Birkett 10:03
Exactly and that sort of, you know, trying some things and having a bit of a plan, of course about why and returning to change the why, why are we here talking? I mean, it's interesting because, on a personal basis I have sort of thought for a while about, we know, perhaps just, you know, talking about something, whether it was about, I mean, one of my personal passions, history. So, it's interesting how I mean, I always reference if I talk to you about podcasts, it's, We Have Ways of Making You Talk this the Second World War podcast, which I'm particularly interested in, a bit obsessed with, that came out of pandemic and that was a personal recommendation. So I'm a perfect marketing piece of research because I know exactly where it came from. I was on a marketing job doing some video recording and this chap was supposed to talk to him about history and then he said, oh, you should check out this podcast, it's good, you know okay. I came in at about, I don't know, maybe they did about 50 or so. So they reasonably well established. And now they're onto about 400 episodes and I've now become a complete devotee, listen to it all the time and I listened to it. This is habitual thing. I listen to it when I go out for runs, or perhaps a walk. But usually, I run, when I go for a run, I like to listen to it, I go for a run and so I'll do that and store some up and then it's quite exciting to then you know, sort of unwrapping the next episode when I've missed a few and then I went on, they diversified into having a website and then having a Patreon site and so then you start to fall in, you pay quite a few quid a month to get exclusive content and then I move on to a live event and actually get got to meet the hosts live in a field somewhere in North Oxfordshire and then they do some videos using YouTube and so it's it's really interesting. I mean, this is two guys, James Holmes and Al Murray, who are obviously very well, James one very well known in the historical publishing community, Al very well known as the pub landlord. So they both have very well established, you know, personas and brands, of course, but I don't think they expect it to take off as much as it did and they've got, you know, 100s/ 1000s of people who are going through a relationship, which is deepening and it's obviously monetised for them. But it's interesting how, when they started, they knew that there was an interest in subjects. But they probably didn't know exactly where it was going to go in this medium of podcasts. But it kind of evolved a surgery, I suppose.

Sally Green 12:36
Yeah, that's right. It just shows how I think podcasts require people to be able to be fairly flexible and fluid about how they talk, what you don't want is to be given a lecture in a podcast. That's not what it is. It's not someone standing up in front of your ears, and just telling you stuff. I mean, that that's a YouTube to tell you how to, you know, fix your video recorder or whatever it is you're trying to fix. But a podcast is a kind of discussion, people go, oh, oh, and um and ahh and giggling and all of those things. That's what a podcast is. It's more of a cuddle than it is a lecture. It's something that you feel anytime so I might get oh, no, I didn't really mean that. What I meant is and that's what's so attractive about it because you're getting the real... it's very real, a podcast, very real. We don't script it, we don't sit down. Sam and I don't practice this. I know this is probably a huge surprise to you. But we've never rehearsed one have we, that's not how it works. We just do sit genuinely sit down in front of a computer screen and sometimes we haven't decided what we're going to talk about until we start talking. So it's not as if we've necessarily done that much research. So you're getting something really from the heart and you're getting us thinking live. This is live thinking you're getting and that's I think that's what makes a podcast really attractive because it's often what you get someone actually you watching someone's thinking patterns happening.

Sam Birkett 14:07
Yeah. And I suppose, as well with what what I find very interesting and what we're going to hopefully do a lot more of as well, which we have done in the past as you're interviewing people from different areas and different backgrounds. So it's just that interesting extra exploration almost in terms of like a networking thing, but a live discussion around well, okay, yeah, who are you? Where do you come from? Do you find this as an issue? When do you did you do this? Do you have an example of this? And so I think that's really interesting, as you say, and yeah, it's an interesting thing. You said about the cuddle and I think it just makes me think about the traditional radio broadcasts and things that panel shows.

Sally Green
Listening with Mother if you're as old as me.

Sam Birkett
Yes, you know what, my parents had this fantastical VHS which had the actual the TV version of you know, they have like Bill and Ben.

Sally Green
Muffin the Mule.

Sam Birkett
And Muffin the Mule, yeah, although I know exactly what you're referring to and the medium of it, I suppose media of radio and broadcast or you know, audio broadcast is something that, you know, it's these days far more portable and personal as well, I mean, like moment I've got these earbuds in and if I'm going in there by example of doing the gardening or going for a run, it's my own personal little bit of escapism, I'm not even having to play a radio in a room, and bore others with what I'm listening to. It's a sort of private escape and I suppose that's what we do to search through certain TV programmes and things that we'd like or books that we'd like to read. But as you say, I think, the accessibility of it and the variety of content out there that you can try is immense, isn't it really.

Sally Green
And it's cheap. You don't have to pay necessarily anything to listen to podcasts. They're completely free piece of entertainment and interest for you. So there's no reason you that's why people have big libraries of them because they're free.

Sam Birkett
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, and it's interesting. I mean, it's there's a number of the ones which in terms of I'm sure that people do this, you know, you get a recommendation, or you hear about one and you find it, you're out, pop that on to my with me, it's my iTunes thing, and it pops up, it says the next episodes come along, I do sometimes struggle to find time to listen to all of them, so that I naturally select the ones which I'm going to follow religiously. You know, in other ones, I again, it's always going to be going on gardening or something, I just go, oh, I fancy having something there. So I'll just pop that on now and I have this. Yeah, that's it. It sounds like I'm sort of really green-fingered. And it was that. And obviously this time of year is not great. But yeah, it's that sort of thing where, you know, you do take these things up. I mean, what I was gonna say is kind of up to my point earlier on, we wanted to circle back in terms of well, I suppose is to have the questions explore around, you know, how have people, and how can people, if they're in smaller businesses or freelancers, perhaps exploit this medium. But then also, I suppose, looking at, it'd be interesting to look at the examples of how businesses have done this or moved into space in the last couple of years, in particular, because I've got an example of working with someone who was creating articles and a regular newsletter, and is sharing this on LinkedIn and then after that, after doing, you know, not not long posts, we're talking about, you know, maybe 700 words, 500 words, something like that, it's not massive, for, you know, an art news newsletter or an article, then they said, how, actually, you know what I should move to podcasting, but specifically for interviewing people, so it was about sustainability, principally, this was and they said, I'd like to move and create a series of interviews of five individuals talking about their perspectives on, you know, sustainability at large and that lent itself very nicely to that medium and it was a way of, of reaching wider audiences, because I mean, the LinkedIn newsletter was only gonna go to the subscribers of that newsletter. The podcast then added an extra dimension and I think a number of businesses perhaps have done things in that way where they've created perhaps a lot of video written or blogs, and they go, ah, do we have another channel, and perhaps they've then switched to podcasts.

Sally Green 18:32
And to be honest, you could very easily do an audio newsletter. I mean, to be honest, you have to wonder those people out there who really work very hard on their newsletter and every time I'm working with a client, who say, I'm gonna do a newsletter, I smile slightly through gritted teeth. Because how many people actually read it, you send it out there, but really how many people read newsletters, I myself, I can't actually remember the last time I read a newsletter, it's just not something that happens. Partly because you have to take the time and you might need to sit in front of your computer, and you've got too much other things to do and when you're sitting in front of your computer, 12 emails arrive and that's more important. So you kind of don't really read your newsletter and it probably would be a really good idea to turn your newsletter into a podcast and you could just email all the people who are on your list, say, look new ones out today, go check it out and then you've got to listen to it and to be honest, you can get a lot of information into two minutes. Two minutes is quite a long time to record. A lot of information come there. So it's not as if you've got to sit there for three and a half hours putting together a saga. It could just be two minutes of audio that people are going to take on board, feel a bit of information, and they're actually going to read it rather than the newsletter which nobody ever ploughs through.

Sam Birkett 19:55
Exactly. Do you know what funnily enough now you've said that I'm almost thinking, theres another client that I have recently started working with and I'm thinking of suggesting that to them, actually, because I've just written down here. I mean, what we've already alluded to here and I think this is relevant for businesses and also for the freelance market is the idea of this is another medium. But what we're looking to do with it the purpose as you say, what's the purpose of the newsletter? Are we trying to get people to click through? What read the stories, consume the contents, click through and then get in touch with us and say, Oh, yes, you're talking about the latest handbag design? Yes, I'll have one of those please. Thanks very much. But actually, we are effectively I mean, using this as a follower, or rather, you know, relationship-building tool, I suppose and that relationship-building enables us if it's a business where, yeah, let's go back to handbags. So we're doing that and we've got, you know, we're gonna go off and we're gonna interview Giovanni about how he sources, the best quality leather or something like that in, you know, will pop off to Tuscany or something like that.

Sally Green 21:01
Of course, it's essential to get the real feeling and sound of Tuscany.

Sam Birkett 21:05
Exactly, exactly. It's the only way you can do it. But if we're talking to people about, you know, whatever business we have, or to customers, or, you know, going to an event, and then we are, you know, whereas you say we're servicing the stories, but we're talking in a more natural way, which if we get our followers and are interested, well, I say our followers, non-customers and customer followers, people who are interested in what we do, and then we're starting to relationship-build or keep a relationship warm aren't we by doing this, perhaps is a very good tool that to do that, and then taking snippets. So perhaps you have a newsletter, which is actually just snippets of the podcast, for example.

Sally Green 21:46
Absolutely, completely, it can save you time. So you're not producing multiple bits of collateral when actually you only need one and the thing about a newsletter is that if very rarely do you get your customers to write bits of your newsletter. I mean, if you've got a very big brand, you just might get somebody to do that. But it's extremely unlikely that most of SMEs would get that to happen. But actually, if you had an audio newsletter, and you just phoned up one of your customers and said, could we just chat about you about that handbag we saw you buying, we know you bought it and you said you said it was gonna be really useful for you to put your daughter's seaweed collection in like she likes to collect when you go to the beach because it's waterproof. Do you think you could just pop on and maybe your daughter could be on and say how wonderful it is for her seaweed collection? And that's much much more likely to have some traction with customers to be who think oh, look, I can listen to Molly, who's just got her seaweed collection. I've got someone just like that and actually it's gonna suit my dog's soggy balls. Excuse me, excuse me. They can fall into all sorts of troubles in the podcast, but it's gonna suit my dog's soggy raincoat as I often have to roll up and put into my handbag. So I think it's kind of... I too am now thinking I'm going to suggest to all my clients that they do an audio newsletter.

Sam Birkett 23:14
Well, that's it everyone thank you very much for listening today. We're back with part two on podcasting next time. In the meantime, if you want to keep in touch you can find us @meanderspod on Twitter, or you can get to us on Facebook. You can also email us which is meanderspod@gmail.com so hope to see you or hear you or you to hear us next time anyway and good luck everyone. Take care bye for now.