Ashley Milne-Tyte

Entrepreneurship diaries 13: how do you market a female-focused podcast?

May 8, 2013

As a podcast host, I'm coming up against something that's beginning to aggravate me. I'm working hard on regularly producing my podcast, The Broad Experience, which happens to be about a huge topic-du-jour, women in the workplace. It's a combination of storytelling and interviews and I launched the show a year ago while I was on CUNY's entrepreneurial journalism program. I had no idea then that Anne-Marie Slaughter and Sheryl Sandberg would soon send the conversation about women and work into the stratosphere. But so they have. 

Yet I'm not getting a big enough slice of their audience.

Despite gaining listeners and subscribers to my newsletter, receiving notes from individuals (including a couple of men) saying how much they like the show, and having the show regularly broadcast on Miami's public radio station and the Women's International News Gathering Service, download numbers could be much higher than they are. So what's going on?

I think there are a few possibilities.

1. I'm producing a lousy product. But unusually for me, with my typically female lack of confidence, I don't believe that. You, of course, are welcome to judge for yourself. If you're male, I wonder if you'll be interested anyway, which brings me to 
2. The fact that the majority of people who download podcasts are men. Some statistics put the numbers at just over half, but one recent number I saw, and it's killing me that I can't recall the source, stated that more than 70% of podcast listeners were male. Which puts me in a tricky position, because I realize my show's subject matter appeals mostly to women. I can tell by talking to a lot of women at networking events that they don't 'do' audio. It's just not on their radar. Either they do not consider themselves 'technical enough' to handle downloading a podcast, or they just never listen to the radio/audio of any kind, and are not about to start. 
3. Not enough people - even women - are actually interested in this topic of women and work and success to want to bother downloading a show on this, or maybe they think it'll be boring (it won't). But again, I'm skeptical that this is true. If they are happy to read reams about this stuff, why not listen, especially when my shows are generally short, at about 15-20 minutes? I think it's a problem of reach and scale. I have some incredibly loyal, engaged listeners. I just need more of them.

To market the show I tweet regularly, although any social media expert would say not enough, post each new show to Facebook, post lots of other stuff to Twitter and Facebook (much of it not my own, as I can't bear talking myself up the entire time I'm online), write a column on women's careers for Metro, write on the topic of women and work for Canadian magazine Women of Influence, go to networking events, speak at the occasional event or panel, and possibly some other things I'm forgetting in my current fog of jet-lag. What I think I need to do is get back on public radio as much as possible, reporting on women and work topics. And of course I could launch a Kickstarter campaign, something several people have suggested I do. I am considering it. What's holding me back is the planning (these campaigns require much thought before launch) and the thought of me sustaining myself through 30 days of interminable selling to friends, family and strangers, with various rounds of hope, despondency, etc. Not to mention what I would offer as rewards to backers...

What am I missing here? What am I not doing to drive downloads that I could be? 

Grasp magazine feature

March 8, 2013

It's been a good week for The Broad Experience. I launched with Mule Radio Syndicate, have been featured on Skillcrush and have also been featured in this piece in Danish magazine Grasp, talking about how the show came into being and where I want to take it. Also earlier this week I appeared on Whitney Johnson's blog with a piece entitled, appropriately, The Accidental Risk Taker. More on that in the post below.

The Accidental Risk Taker

March 4, 2013

Read here. Appears on Whitney Johnson's blog. If you don't know Whitney, she's a former Wall Street analyst as well as a co-founder of Rose Park Advisors, the investment firm of Harvard Business School management guru Clayten Christensen. She writes for the Harvard Business Review blog and speaks all over the place about topics from investing to innovation to women. I met her at a conference last summer and subsequently read her book 'Dare, Dream, Do', which is about encouraging women not to shelve their dreams about life and work, even as life gets complicated. This piece is about my very unexpected launch into the world of entrepreneurship. There's an audio component too.

Entrepreneurship diaries 12: promoting a podcast

February 15, 2013

After last week's cri de coeur about what I should be doing with my work life, I heard from two listeners and a few friends with advice, which was heartening. I've decided that for the next few months I will concentrate solely on producing and promoting The Broad Experience - after that I'll take stock and decide next steps. I feel I have to put time into the show in order to build its audience and secure sponsors. Talking of which, I took a big step this week thanks to fellow writer, public radio reporter and podcast host Tanner Latham's example. This two-minute teaser gives listeners, potential sponsors, partners, and radio stations an idea of what The Broad Experience is about. I am actively looking for sponsorship, so if you know anyone...

Also, I recently got in touch again with a podcast network I had contacted in September to ask if they were still interested in working with me. For logistical reasons things kept getting put off, but the answer is yes. This means that, beginning the week of February 25th, I'll have a home for The Broad Experience at a network that has some heft with iTunes and Stitcher. The show should receive some promotion and pull in some more listeners - many more, I hope. I'll reveal more after my debut with them. Finally in podcast news, yesterday I spoke to Julie Shapiro of the Third Coast International Audio Festival for a piece she's writing on why there are so few female podcasters. She mentioned a comment Andrea Seabrook of the Decode DC podcast made in a recent interview with Third Coast, which I will post here:

"As for the gender gap, I can tell you that throughout my career at NPR, young people came to me for advice on getting into journalism. Twenty-something women would ask, what degree should I get? What's the next internship for me? They seemed to be looking for some authority to give them the credentials or experience to be a reporter. Young men, on the other hand, would ask how do I start now?"

I've said it before and I'll say it again: women do not ask for things the way we should, in part because we feel we need permission for everything. Until this changes, we - including me - will have less chance of getting what we want. You know that podcast network I just spoke about? I pitched them my show as soon as I heard of their existence. Their response said, in part, that they were very glad to hear from a woman, because all their pitches came from men.

Entrepreneurship diaries 11: do I jump?

February 7, 2013

For the past few days I've been gripped with uncertainty, confusion and occasionally terror as I dither over the next steps regarding my podcast, The Broad Experience. I've become increasingly irritated by the fact that I can't concentrate on it full time and give it the attention it deserves while I keep getting pulled away to freelance work. A professor of mine at CUNY told me at the end of last year the content part was good, but that I am not doing is enough on the business side. Guilty. This is what the entrepreneurial journalism course at CUNY (where I was this time last year) was all about - teaching journalists, who generally have arts brains, how to tackle the business side of producing and distributing their work - how to make money from it, in other words. Yet the business side still feels very unnatural to me, and, as with lots of things that scare us, I tend to put it off. Selling myself is still pure hell. I don't automatically think about 'models', 'strategy' and numbers the way my MBA friends do. The issue now is whether I hunker down for a period of time, forget scouting for or accepting freelance work and commit fully to The Broad Experience.

I might not be thinking so seriously about this option at all had it not been for a conversation last year with David Gerlach, producer of the podcast Blank on Blank. At one point he said casually, 'No one takes you seriously unless you're doing it full time.' That comment has kept popping up to haunt me. Part of me is petrified at the thought of doing the show and nothing else. Not just because of the zero income aspect, but because what I am doing is so hard, and concentrating on it full time would amplify that fact. Building an audience feels like trekking uphill with a backpack on, even though I've had the show distributed by WLRN in Miami and via the Women's International News Gathering Service. As my former colleague Nate DiMeo once said, 'audio never goes viral.' (By the way, Nate wrote last night's episode of NBC's Parks and Recreation, so he's not doing too badly.)

But the other part of me is excited at being able to focus on this one thing for the first time and potentially take it to the next level. So should I, as my friend and colleague Manoush Zomorodi put it last summer, abandon my cautious, hedging stance and go 'balls to the walls'? 

I would have to put on my business hat (flimsy though it may be), have a plan, and spend every single day trying to push the show out to those I think would be ideal sponsors and/or partners, as well as make new episodes, all without any help whatsoever. How I wish I could hire a social media manager! I could no longer hide behind the excuse that I have other work to do. Because I wouldn't. I would only be doing this. So it's the sheer, unmitigated difficulty of the task ahead that unnerves me most. I'm not delighted at the prospect of failure, either, and what would come after that, but for now I can put those thoughts aside. It's the idea of the day-to-day slog in unfamiliar and uncomfortable terrain that I find so daunting. 

Pimp your podcast (or 'am I totally nuts to be doing this?')

October 22, 2012

Entrepreneurship diaries #10 
From the 'Am I crazy?' edition: earlier today I was part of a panel at CUNY Journalism School called 'Pimp Your Podcast' (yes). The other panelists were NPR's Adam Davidson of Planet Money fame (and much other fame - Adam has produced tons of great pieces for both NPR and Marketplace, including many from Iraq), Mia Lobel, senior producer of the Distillations podcast, which tells stories about chemistry and makes them interesting for lay people, and Jim Colgan of SoundCloud. I originally met Jim when he was at WNYC, where he worked for ten years. 

Moderator Amanda Aronczyk, Adam Davidson, me, Mia Lobel and Jim Colgan (Photo: Skyler Reid/CUNY Graduate School of Journalism)

Adam believes public radio is gradually going kaput and is amazed more public radio bosses 'aren't freaking out' about the fact that public radio listenership is tailing off. As this piece in Current points out, the latest figures illustrate the problem. Most people under a certain age (30, 35?) don't own radios and get any audio they hear from an app or stream it online. When I asked one of my Columbia Journalism School classes this summer if anyone owned a radio, not one hand went up. Planet Money is hugely successful, with hundreds of thousands of downloads - I can't recall if this is per week or per month, but either way it's impressive. Adam pointed out, though, that without the sizeable NPR budget devoted to the show he's not sure the podcast (and NPR has told them they should not refer to it as a 'podcast' any more) could work for its creators, monetarily speaking. That's the big question here - if audio is all going online, how the heck is anyone going to make money from it? Kickstarter campaigns are all very well but they do not provide a sustainable funding model. As I've said elsewhere, Jesse Thorn of Bullseye brings in $300,000 to $400,000 a year from listener donations, which seems pretty impressive to me. But he has a family of podcasts in his stable and has worked very hard to build his brand. At the Third Coast conference earlier this month he described his journey as tough. 

Mia's podcast is funded by the Chemical Heritage Foundation so I was interested to hear her talk about how lucky she feels to be paid to do what she does and mention in response to a question that the Foundation does not interfere editorially with her stories. That's something many journalists would worry about if working for a foundation or company that has its own agenda. Mia says in her case, it's not an issue. I'm a big fan of SoundCloud, which hosts my podcast, so was intrigued to hear Jim talking about new ways in which it intends to work with sound in the future, and about the SoundCloud fellowship. Public radio journalists and podcasters Amy Costello (Tiny Spark) and Andrea Seabrook (Decode DC) are both wrapping up SoundCloud fellowships at the moment.

At the end of the day, where are we going? Hearing Adam speak, I felt rather depressed. The idea of actually being able to earn a real living from The Broad Experience - even down the road - once more seemed crazy. That said, my podcast requires nothing like the resources of Planet Money. Still, I require money to live on the planet. I am currently juggling The Broad Experience with actual paying work, which means I can't give it the attention it deserves. Which, in turn, means it isn't getting the marketing input it needs, among other things. So I come back to a question that haunts me fairly often: am I completely mad to be devoting myself to a project that may never earn me anything approaching a living? Can I somehow make it pay? If not, should I continue to produce a show on a topic I believe is of the utmost importance, not to mention interest, even if I do so infrequently? Answers on a postcard please.