When it comes to creating content, social distancing can be a problem. It is difficult to do a sit-down interview for print or online or grab some engaging video with someone about their product when you need to stay several feet away from them. So, what is the solution?
Podcasting is one that we have been using. Our clients are spread around the country (and, in some cases, abroad) so it is one of the ways we have to use through necessity. We have been embracing it even more since lockdown.
One of our clients Vattenfall wanted to highlight the story of its supply chain which meant setting up interviews with people in the heart of North Wales, the Isle of Wight, Northern England and here in East Anglia too.
This meant reverting to the phone (well it is good enough for a lot of the national broadcasters, so it was good enough for us) and recording chats on a Zoom digital recorder*.
(*Other brands of recorder are available)
With the aid of Audacity to edit the interviews, some great sources of rights-free music and the launch of our Soundcloud channel, it meant we could create engaging content that can be listened to wherever you are and whenever you wanted to listen to it.
It is a new departure for us, but it is a great way for us to share stories. On a completely different note, one of our best-loved clients Roger Carr who is the man behind a host of fire safety products used worldwide was the subject of a podcast reminiscing about his 50 years in the business and all done via the phone-line again.
This journey into podcasting is new to us. We are in the process of moving onto as many of the podcasting platforms as we can creating individual brands and titles for our client’s audio content.
Global figures are showing a bit of a drop in podcast downloads generally which experts are putting down to fewer people listening because of fewer daily commutes during lockdown. According to Podtrac though, there is a nine per cent rise in podcasts about science which is good for our client-base and fiction too which is not an area we have explored yet!
There is also a rise in people who are interested in stories, information and content linked to the current coronavirus with an apparent hunger to find out more about how it is affecting people.
Hopefully the lockdown will be over soon, and we can focus even more on people who have great stories to tell and create more content for people wherever they get their podcasts.
