Anna Doble, Digital Editor, BBC World Service, UK and Jon Manel, Podcast Commissioning Editor, BBC World Service, UK discussed how to build a community around your podcast.
They said that podcast fans not only want to hear great audio; they want to feel like they're part of a ‘club’ or community and feel much more loyalty to a podcast than to other forms of media.
They said that creating podcast communities is central to the BBC World Service’s podcast strategy. It invites them to do the work of building knowledge around your podcast for you! But it’s not a gimmick – it’s a genuine community being built as part of the podcast.
And they discussed ‘Parentland’ – a global parenting podcast, which had a closed Facebook group full of listeners discussing the themes of the podcast. It brought in listeners from across over 100 countries and also brought new questions and themes to the content of the episodes. Some of the members of the group even ended up on the podcast themselves.
They also talked about ‘Death in Ice Valley’, which reached the top of podcast charts, turned many into amateur detectives investigating worldwide and won an award for crowd sourcing and citizen journalism. They used a Facebook group to help crack codes and gather people together to solve mysteries. It garnered huge engagement.