Successful business owners stay up on the latest marketing trends—and they use them to reach potential clients. Between Facebook Ads, Instagram posts, even time-tested creative direct mail campaigns, architects and designers are also implementing their own podcasts.
Podcast series about the profession and the work that designers, AV consultants, and architects do are a great way to connect with new clients. Before the pandemic and especially during, podcasts popped up in all industries and were well viewed or listened to thanks to promotion on social media sites. And they aren't going away now that the health crisis is receding.
The basics
Just in case this explanation is necessary (although it's probably NOT), a podcast is an audio or video file, which can be watched or listened to via a streaming platform or downloaded to a mobile device or computer.
According to the latest podcast statistics, more than 144 million Americans listened to podcasts this year, and 51% of the U.S. population older than 12 have listened to a podcast at least once. And those numbers continue to rise annually.
The podcast Take it or Leave it, hosted by Stephen Houk Designs, offers a behind-the-scenes look from church creatives and real-life conversations with church designers.
Videos and podcasts really started to increase during the earlier months of the pandemic, when businesses were slow and looking for ways to connect with clients. Many companies started making videos for their YouTube business pages and others created podcasts where they talked about their process and provided industry-specific information.
For instance, the podcast Take it or Leave it, hosted by Stephen Houk Designs, offers a behind-the-scenes look from church creatives in the Pro Church Media community with real-life conversations with church designers and other church-related businesses.
Yet, there doesn’t seem to be many church designers who have joined in on the recent craze for their businesses, and this is something they could—and probably should—be doing if they want to get ahead and be on the minds of former, current, and potential clients.
It’s important to create and maintain a visually cohesive brand aesthetic, such as incorporating a branded design with consistent color palettes, fonts, and images that create a visual differentiator.
Courtney Malengo, founder of Spark + Buzz Communications, a strategic communications consultancy that helps brands tell their story to inspire audiences and galvanize growth, believes podcasts are a great way for church designers to attract business.
To start, she notes it’s important to identify a target audience and understand what content they are most interested in.
“Once you have a good sense of that, and can see what your competitors are doing, find topics that are unique to your company while simultaneously positioning your expertise and authority in the industry,” Malengo says. “Develop a strategic story with key themes that are used as the guidelines for the type of content that is included in your podcasts, ensuring brand cohesion and consistency. This helps determine whether your content and guests are on-brand for your organizational goals, as well as gives you ways to measure your messaging.”
"Develop a strategic story with key themes that are used as the guidelines for the type of content that is included in your podcasts, ensuring brand cohesion and consistency." Courtney Malengo, Founder, Spark + Buzz Communications
Malengo also notes that it’s important to create and maintain a visually cohesive brand aesthetic, such as incorporating a branded design with consistent color palettes, fonts, and images that create a visual differentiator.
“Don’t just post to post, but rather maintain a regular content/production schedule with strategy and intentionality, based upon your team’s bandwidth and budget,” Malengo says. “Evaluate the best way to produce your podcast to ensure the highest quality that’s on budget, whether through in-house production means or partnering with a technically proficient third-party vendor.”
Likewise, determine if you want to start off with audio only, or offer both audio and video versions of your podcast.
A little deeper
Will Hankinson, owner of IntroCave, which helps companies create custom YouTube videos, reports that YouTube will automatically turn anything that looks like a timestamp (00:00) into a link that jumps the video to that spot, which is extremely useful for creating an outline of your video in the description. That can be important to a church designer who wants to showcase something specific.
Because viewers often navigate away from video content if it’s not exactly what they are looking for, [timestamps are] helpful in keeping them engaged.
A YouTube timestamp links to a specific moment in a video, so it allows creators to direct users to the most relevant part of a video through a link. Because viewers often navigate away from video content if it’s not exactly what they are looking for, this is especially helpful in keeping them engaged.
Hankinson notes not only do timestamps improve the viewer experience, but they also serve as a great SEO hack as both YouTube and Google reward their use.
“If you’re showing off different pieces of content or compiling multiple sequences into a presentation, this is pretty essential,” he says. “Because those timestamps are limited to whole seconds, it’s important to edit with the outline in mind. I try to extend any fade-outs from previous sections to end on whole seconds so that the timestamp links will jump to a complete section of the video instead of picking up the last half second of the previous section.”
Another tip Hankinson offers to make the videos more user-friendly is to add title screens or animated intro videos to each sequence.
In general, if you have a great story to tell and a captivating way for how that narrative unfolds on your podcast, people will listen and watch.
“I’m biased towards animation because I sell them, but you can do just fine with still images for a brief moment to help as the user’s eyes/browser are jumping from the link back into the video,” he says.
For those who have already made the jump and are doing some sort of podcast or video series, Malengo says there are countless ways that these can be improved. However, those solutions are really predicated upon what the challenges are.
“For example, if the core challenge is lack of engagement, you need to assess why that is,” she says. “That would involve exploring reasons like uninteresting content, lack of quality production, length of podcast, topics discussed, etc. In general though, if you have a great story to tell and a captivating way for how that narrative unfolds on your podcast, people will listen and watch.”
What Basic Equipment Do You Need to Podcast?
You may have great ideas for content, but without the right equipment it’s not going to look professional. Here is a list of the equipment needed for those who want to ensure their podcast is tops.
The most obvious item needed is a computer with a camera and microphone, but to really do the job right, you’ll want an exterior camera and microphone to ensure your video and sound is high quality.
A good USB microphone isn’t terribly expensive, with a solid offering only about $150, and cameras are about the same. There are of course higher-end models for both, but unless you are aiming for a Stephen Spielberg-type film, the lesser models are fine.
You’ll also need an audio interface, which acts as a bridge between the mic and computer as it converts the analog signal from the mic into a digital signal that the computer can use.
A good set of headphones is also recommended as it will allow you to hear exactly what your audio will sound like and will help you judge when retakes are necessary. Avoid open-back headphones for recording because your microphone will pick up the sound.
A mic stand will keep the mic in a fixed position and keep you from having to worry about it moving unexpectedly.
Your smart phone can actually work great as a camera, but there are higher-priced options that will allow you to do more close-ups and effects.
Finally, a ring light or other lighting option will ensure that everything is clear and lit properly.
