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Conventional wisdom says that video is the key to podcast discovery. From time to time, he pulls the most appealing clips from the show that he hopes will go viral on TikTok. That way, a wider (and younger) audience becomes your new listeners. Uncah jamz is a prime example of this and is gaining a lot of new attention. please call her daddy. But even the podcasters who have cracked the code on TikTok have found that the relationship between engagement on the app and actual views is weak at best.
The issue may soon become moot. Last week, seemingly out of nowhere, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would force the Chinese company ByteDance to either sell TikTok or ban it from doing business in the US. If this passes the Senate (which is a big “if”), it will change the social media landscape in this country, but not so much the podcasting landscape.
Major media outlets are using TikTok as part of a multi-pronged strategy, but most of the time it doesn't work. It's like a celebrity interview show biased toward Gen Z. please call her daddy and really good podcast It works fine on the platform, but it's an exception. I'm told that the prospect of a TikTok ban and how it will affect marketing strategies has barely come up in internal discussions at some major audio companies.
NPR's planet money is one of the few public radio shows to appear on TikTok. Featuring quirky instructional videos starring Courtney Theophine and Jack Corbett, planet money She has 785,000 followers on TikTok, 325,000 more than NPR's main account.
“Anecdotally, based on emails, comments, surveys, etc., we know that people learned about podcasts because of TikTok (and vice versa).” planet money Executive producer Alex Goldmark said: hot pod on mail. “It is very difficult to quantify or measure which downloads are driven by a particular TikTok post.”
Goldmark knows very well that even after working hard to gain followers on this platform, one should not rely on it. “We've adapted to TikTok. Jack and Courtney are doing a great job of matching the style and tone of the audience in the venue,” he said. “We will adapt to what happens next. We have been doing well since leaving Twitter as a company. We thought we should expect the same no matter what platform we are in.” That has never happened.”
Gary Arndt, independent podcaster and host of Top Rank history show everything every day and everywhere, managed to get some of the explainers featured in the TikTok algorithm on topics like the Little Ice Age and the development of Route 66. But his link through his tracker shows that very few viewers actually bother to click on the platform to listen to the show.
“A lot of podcasters seem to think they can't do anything or just share it on social media. That doesn't work.”
“Even if your video gets tens of thousands of views, you’re lucky if you get more than a single-digit number of clicks a day,” he said. “The truth is, most social media apps don't want people to leave their environment. They want to keep them there.”
For him, traditional marketing, like promoting similar shows or buying ads within podcast apps like Overcast or Castbox, can't compete. And the purchased media seems to be working. Arndt says it gets about 1.5 million downloads each month.
“Even if it's an independent podcast, it's still media property,” he said. hot pod. “But a lot of podcasters seem to think they can't do anything or just share it on social media. That doesn't work.”
But there are certain cases where TikTok can move the needle.Christina Lumage, true crime show host creepy story latin american history podcast unknown history, has amassed 215,000 followers on TikTok, sometimes producing posts that garner more than 1 million views. Although her downloads aren't that high at about 2,000 per week, Lemag says a viral video could temporarily triple her listenership.
Rumage may have an advantage for several reasons. She says her demographic skews younger, with the majority between her 24s and her 30s. She also adapted well to her preferred TikTok style of using a green screen to explain face-to-face. Even if TikTok isn't growing her audience in a consistent way, it's an important part of her distribution.
“I hear people all the time that TikTok doesn’t convert into listeners,” Lemag said. “That's true for me too. And I can't tell you how many messages I get saying, 'I found you on Tik Tok, I love you,' so losing discoverability and engagement is going to be a big problem.” ”
As the Senate considers how to proceed with the bill, Rumage joins other TikTok users in speaking out against the ban. She reposted her call to action on the app and emailed officials (“I don't like phone calls, so I don't call them”).
The most common phrase I hear from podcasters is, “Just go to Instagram.” But for Rumage, it's not a suitable replacement. She says that while Reels is similar in format, she prioritizes aesthetically pleasing content.
“TikTok is much more casual. All you need is a green screen, you don't have to make the video look nice, and I think that's enough,” she said. “A popular podcast on Instagram has professional-looking videos with really great cameras. You can tell they have a team.”
Even Arndt, who has amassed 180,000 followers on Instagram as a travel photographer, says Instagram is bad for podcasts. “For some reason, video content is performing even worse there,” he said. Although he is not a fan of his TikTok, “To be honest, TikTok is better but he is the one.”
