The podcast mistake every magazine publisher makes

Every publisher wants to showcase their best content, but one common technique is killing podcast reach.

I'll show you what to do instead to maximise the reach and impact of your podcast.

This article was originally published in Podcast Strategy Weekly, my email newsletter. Sign up for free to receive new issues first at podcaststrategy.substack.com

I’ve run podcasts for three large news publishers now: The Telegraph, the Evening Standard and the New Statesman. And at each one the same question has come up: Should we make podcast episodes in a magazine format?

By which is meant: applying a magazine structure to a podcast episode. First the lead stories, then a couple of features followed by culture, sport, or maybe an amusing “and finally”.

It makes sense for news publishers to think like this. It’s how a newspaper or magazine is structured and it’s familiar in broadcast, both TV and radio. So it should work for a podcast too, right?

Well, you absolutely can script a programme like that. But is it a format most likely to grow an audience?

Based on my experience and the data I’ve seen, my answer is no.?

Here’s why:

Podcasts are not a linear medium

Publishers often seem to want a magazine format because it seems the most obvious way to reflect the breadth of their publication. We’re good at news! We’re also good at features! We’re also good at travel! (For example)

This works for linear media: newspapers, magazines, broadcast. But podcasts are not a linear medium.

I think of a podcast feed like a website, and the individual episodes like articles. An individual article deals with a single issue and is sold on a single headline, standfirst and image (and maybe the byline). Users are free to navigate around a site to select the articles they’re most interested in reading. If their interest is satisfied with one article, they’re more likely to read another.?

Listeners stop half way through

Many podcast users choose their next listen by scrolling through a feed and choosing to play a specific episode based on the title. If the episode delivers on the title’s promise in a compelling way, they’re likely to listen to the end. If the experience satisfies them, they’ll come back for more.

To make people click, you want a title that piques interest and curiosity - which is easiest to do by focusing on a single story. But on podcasts I’ve run in a magazine format, we’ve observed significant user drop-off after the title story is complete.

Listeners come for the lead story then stop listening once their curiosity is satisfied.

It’s tempting to get round this by including all your stories in the title. This either risks a bloated word count (most of which gets hidden by the podcast browser), or you create a meaningless word salad - either of which fails to drive plays.

It really doesn’t work for YouTube

YouTube is the fastest-growing platform for podcast listening - not least because it offers something no podcast platform does: algorithmic discovery.?

Video has been part of the New Statesman’s podcast strategy for a couple of years and our YouTube audience is now at least double that of our audio-only audience. Nearly all of that audience has discovered the New Statesman podcast because YouTube recommended it to them on their home feed (the first thing logged-in users see when they open the app or visit the YouTube homepage).?

Why does the algorithm suggest our videos? Because YouTube uses watch time as a key signal. If a video has a high watch time among users of a certain profile, YouTube will show that video to more users who match that profile.

Magazine shows - or even videos dealing with more than one topic - kill watch time, for the reasons I explained above. On YouTube this will stymie your chances of your videos being recommended to new users.

What you should do instead

Here are the actions I’ve taken to accelerate the growth of the New Statesman podcast - and these are what I recommend to other publishers when they ask me.

Focus each episode or format on a single vertical

The New Statesman podcast used to be purely focused on UK politics. Our audience knows to come to us for this. We experimented with adding in different sections within a given episode, and ran separate feeds for other verticals. More recently we’ve consolidated everything into a single feed, but differentiated a variety of episode formats within the feed.?

This means a listener coming for pure politics can get a single hit in the weekly politics episode - but there’s a different weekly episode for Global Affairs and Ideas. We’ve found listeners have rewarded this move with increased and consistent listen/watch time.

Treat the feed like your magazine

Instead of individual episodes having to contain the whole breadth of the publication in a single hit, your podcast feed can be representative of your range.

In the case of the New Statesman this means that through the week a listener can listen to one episode diving deep into the magazine cover story or one of the big ideas being discussed online, then later in the week hear from our Westminster team on the latest politics news.?

One caveat to this: it requires experimentation to test the interest and tolerance of your audience. We still find culture-focused episodes underperform, so would need to find a way of covering these subjects in a way that satisfies our core audience interests.

Split YouTube videos into individual stories

Within vertical-focused episodes we still sometimes discuss more than one talking point - in particular in our weekly listener questions episode. When uploading these to YouTube we split a half-hour podcast into two or three 8-10 minute videos each on a single, specific talking point.?

This allows us to align the title, thumbnail and content so that viewers are more likely to watch for longer, which has a positive impact on channel growth.

I’ll talk more about YouTube tactics in future issues of Podcast Strategy Weekly.

Actions you can take right now

• Check how long people are listening to your episodes for. You can find listen-through data in Apple Podcasts and Spotify. If you see a drop off, what’s causing it?
• If you produce a magazine show, try breaking the segments off into individual episode formats and see what happens to your listen-through.
• Chop up your episodes into multiple, single-story videos for YouTube.

Hi, I’m Chris. I’ve grown podcast and video audiences at some of the UK’s largest publishers including the Telegraph, the Evening Standard and the New Statesman.

The teams I’ve created have produced award-winning podcasts, reaching millions of listeners and delivering return on investment.

Every Monday in Podcast Strategy Weekly I share lessons I've learned over 12 years in podcasting to help you develop your own strategies for podcast success.

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