S16E5: Developing Content

The success of your advocacy podcast hinges on the quality of the content you produce. Great content is not only engaging but aligned with your advocacy mission, ensuring that each episode hits with your audience and furthers your cause. 

1. Know Your Audience

Understanding your audience is the first and oft missed step in creating compelling content. Your audience’s interests, values and level of understanding of your advocacy issue will guide how you shape your content.

  • Audience Research: Conduct surveys, listen to feedback and engage with your audience on social media to gain insights into their preferences and needs. Knowing what your listeners care about will help you tailor your content to address their concerns and interests. A great place to start is your email list. Why are individuals supporting your service? What difference do they think you make in the world? Why? All this information is gold. 
  • Segment Your Audience: If your audience is diverse, consider segmenting them into different groups based on demographics, interests or knowledge level. This allows you to create targeted content that speaks directly to each segment’s unique perspective. This data can provide great ideas for seasonal content. Starting with the generalities of your service and advancing to the nitty gritty of service delivery and outcomes makes for powerful content.

2. Align Content with Your Advocacy Mission

Your podcast should consistently reflect your advocacy mission, ensuring that every episode contributes to your overarching goals. Here’s how to maintain alignment:

  • Define Your Core Message: This will most likely flow from your mission and vision statements. Interrogating these with this aim in mind can also point out where these statements are too generic or full of weasel words. Clearly define your key message or value that your podcast aims to convey. Every episode should tie back to this core message. Think of the process as akin to creating audio essays.
  • Set Specific Goals for Each Episode: Whether you’re aiming to inform, persuade or inspire action, set clear objectives for each episode. These goals will help you stay focused and ensure that your content serves your advocacy mission. Ensure these refer back to your core message.
  • Use a Content Calendar: Plan your episodes in advance using a content calendar. This helps you maintain a cohesive narrative across episodes and ensures that your content aligns with significant dates, events or campaigns related to your advocacy work. Don’t be afraid to toss in the occasional bonus episode if a news item or unexpected win for your service pops into view.

3. Craft a Strong Narrative

Stories are powerful tools in advocacy, helping to humanise issues and create an emotional connection with listeners. Crafting a strong narrative is essential for making your content compelling. Use the techniques of storytelling. Open narrative loops to be closed, a hero’s journey and so on. 

  • Use Personal Stories: Integrate personal stories that illustrate the real-world impact of the issues you’re advocating for. These stories can be from your own experiences or those of people directly affected by the issue. These must be structured to engage listener’s interest.
  • Structure Your Episodes:  A simple chronological narrative may work or you may need to highlight the drama/struggle before diving into the story that resolves this tension. Start with a strong hook to grab your listeners’ hearts and minds, followed by a clear progression of ideas or events. Conclude with a powerful call to action that motivates your audience to engage further with your cause.
  • Incorporate Multiple Perspectives: While maintaining your core message, including diverse voices and perspectives in your narrative can enrich your content and make it more relatable to a broader audience. This is where an eight to ten episode season would make most sense. Seasons give you the time and space to develop ideas and storylines in depth.

4. Utilise Different Content Formats

Diversifying your content formats can keep your podcast fresh and engaging, catering to different listener preferences and learning styles. Equally chopping and changing without rhyme nor reason will only confuse your listeners. Be intentional, let your listeners know what’s coming and, most importantly, why? 

  • Interviews: Featuring interviews with experts, activists or individuals affected by the issue can provide valuable insights and add credibility to your podcast. Interviews also break up the monotony of a single voice and can introduce new ideas and perspectives.
  • Storytelling Segments: Dedicate segments of your podcast to storytelling, where you or your guests share personal experiences that relate to your advocacy mission. This can create an emotional connection with your audience and make abstract issues more tangible.
  • Q&A Sessions: Engage your audience directly by hosting Q&A sessions where you answer listener questions. This not only provides valuable information but also fosters a sense of community and involvement. You can also discover questions to be answered through a google search. What are the predictive questions google supplies when you type in a query relating to your service’s focus. This is a great way to obtain ideas anyway but also good for a Q&A episode at the end of a season.

5. Engage Your Audience

Engaging your audience is key to building a loyal listener base and creating a community around your advocacy mission.

  • Call to Action: End each episode with a clear call to action and only one per episode. Research would suggest the same CTA needs to be maintained for at least 5 episodes before it gains traction. Therefore, don’t chop and change. Consistency is the secret sauce to podcasting. Maintain it in every aspect of your show. Examples of a CTA: encouraging listeners to sign a petition, donate, volunteer or simply share the episode with others. Make it easy for them to take the next step by providing links or instructions.
  • Interactive Content: Encourage listeners to participate in the podcast by submitting questions, stories or feedback. You can feature these in future episodes, creating a more interactive experience.
  • Leverage Social Media: Use social media platforms to promote your podcast, share additional content and engage with your audience. Social media can also be a space to continue the conversation between episodes.

6. Measure and Adapt

To ensure your podcast remains effective in advancing your advocacy mission, it’s important to regularly measure its impact and adapt your content strategy as needed.

  • Monitor Analytics: Track listener metrics such as downloads, episode completion rates and listener demographics. These insights can help you understand what’s working and where you might need to make adjustments.
  • Solicit Feedback: Actively seek feedback from your audience through surveys, comments or social media interactions. This feedback can provide valuable insights into what your listeners enjoy and what they think could be improved.
  • Iterate and Improve: Use the data and feedback you collect to continuously refine your content. Whether it’s tweaking your format, changing your delivery style or exploring new topics, staying responsive to your audience’s needs is key to maintaining relevance and impact.

Conclusion

Creating compelling podcast content that aligns with your advocacy mission is both an art and a science. It requires a deep understanding of your audience, a strong narrative, high-quality content and ongoing engagement. By following these tips, you can develop podcast episodes that not only inform and engage but also drive meaningful change. As you continue to produce content, remember to stay true to your advocacy mission, listen to your audience and be willing to adapt. With dedication and creativity, your podcast can become a powerful voice for your cause.

If you’re thinking about or even ready to start your service’s podcast, email me: jon@jmps.au link in the show notes and we can have a chat. I work on a monthly retainer basis and you receive 4 episodes a month, uploaded to a host, clips for use in socials, help with local recordings where you are and all this for A$500 a month on a twelve month contract.

Until next episode, thanks for listening.