January is always the time for “year in review” features and “this year’s big predictions”, and one thing we noticed in many of this years’ articles was the popularity of podcasts.
From a communications point of view, podcasts are brilliant. They provide a direct way of telling your story – unedited, in exactly the way you wish to tell it.
Podcasts are easy to find, easy to download and easy to listen to so are very accessible for audiences. Podcast searches are very targeted too so you can be sure to be found by the exact right people. Not only that but they’re easy to create too. What more could you want!
There are many excellent PR/marketing podcasts that are worth dipping in to. PR Bants “explores current affairs through a PR lens” which is always a good listen to get insight from. In a recent episode, they released their own 2019 predictions. Naturally, Brexit played its part and one area discussed was trust and how there will be a crisis in trust this year due to Brexit uncertainty creating polarised views and divided audiences.
They also made interesting observations about the ethics of aligning with a cause or charity. Cause related marketing is always a tricky one. The brand may well have a genuine interest in helping a charity but in business there will naturally always be some element of capitalism in doing it for corporate advancement. One to watch for 2019…
Future Proof looks at the marketing side of the PR spectrum and has a great archive of previous episodes to go through. A really interesting one is from July 2018 with Lucy Moon who discussed what its like to be a blogger and influencer. She described how it works from a business point of view and how she raised her profile to the point where brands now come to her. She also talked about credibility of bloggers, the honesty and transparency of the influencer marketing and how audiences respond to #ad in a post. Well worth a listen!
Another favourite is the PR Resolution Podcast where they were recently joined by Steve Strickland from Talker Tinker Trouble Maker which was formed to deliver transparency and a new model for the pr agency. Steve said that, in a nutshell, PR is about “getting the right people talking about what you’re doing”. We couldn’t agree more – it’s so easy to forget that among marketing jargon and a crowded media space, which is why Honest was formed.
