Podcast
Purdue: Podcasting for Universities
In this week’s episode, we talk with the host, writer, and producer of This is Purdue, Kate Young, about why a university like Purdue would start a podcast.
Featuring
In this week’s episode, we talk with the host, writer, and producer of This is Purdue, Kate Young, about why a university like Purdue would start a podcast.
In this week’s episode, we talk with the host, writer, and producer of This is Purdue, Kate Young, about why a university like Purdue would start a podcast.
You’ll hear how they measure success, what their goals are with the podcast, how it impacts growth at the university, and how they grew to 116,000 listeners in 2021.
Name: Kate Young
What she does: Host, writer, and producer of the This is Purdue podcast
Connect with her: LinkedIn
Don’t forget about YouTube when it comes to sharing your podcast. Particularly, if you record video versions of your episodes. The Purdue team uses a mix of organic and paid strategies to boost their podcast views by taking an entire 40-minute interview, optimizing the titles and descriptions, and also uploading the audio version of the podcast using Wavve or Headliner. They’ve seen a 195% increase in downloads using this strategy.
Purdue uses their podcast as a pure brand play. Rather than writing these stories, they bring on faculty, alumni, and students so listeners can hear these stories directly from the voices making an impact on their school. Not only does this create a sense of community within students, but it also connects alumni and faculty back to their alma mater.
Some of the older alumni might not be as familiar with podcasts or podcast apps. So in order to reach that audience, the Purdue team connects the podcast’s RSS feed to Facebook so people can listen directly from that platform. YouTube would be another great way to reach an audience who might be less likely to subscribe to a podcast but are more likely to subscribe to a YouTube channel.
Purdue shares everything from audiograms and TikToks to short video clips and quote graphics for every episode they publish. Because this is their official university podcast, the marketing and communications teams are able to manage the show from start to finish, meaning the branding is consistent throughout, and social content is created on a regular basis. This helps their audience grow on all platforms.
When pitching to media outlets, Purdue’s PR team embeds any relevant podcast clips into their articles to provide an audio version of the story they’re trying to tell. Not only does this give the reader and media outlets a more personal perspective on the story, but it also increases your podcast reach and downloads.
It’s important to give your guests a nicely packaged set of assets they can use to promote your podcast episodes. This should include graphics, videos, show notes, and even social copy. Make it as easy as possible for them to share your content in order to increase your podcast’s reach within their audience.
When Kate hears compliments on Purdue’s podcast from people who went to other schools (even rival schools), that’s when she knows the show is a true success. Those people aren’t tied to Purdue, they didn’t drink the Kool-Aid, yet they still enjoy listening to the podcast and find value in it. That’s the ultimate goal and measure of success.
It may seem like there’s an overabundance of podcasts out there and your window to start a new one may be closing. But Kate mentioned out of the millions of podcasts in production, only 322,000 are active. Many people and brands realize how much work goes into creating and sustaining a show and give up after a season, or even after 10 episodes. So if you’re thinking of getting into podcasting as a marketing or brand play, know that it’s not too late.
The power of audio is undeniable. Having 100 people listen to your branded podcast content for 30 to 45 minutes and truly immersing themselves in your brand has a much larger emotional impact than 500 website visits. A podcast allows listeners to spend quality time with your brand, which is incomparable to a 2-minute article read. This allows you to build trust and brand affinity.
Kate Young: 500 people or 1,000 people listening to this branded content for 30 minutes is so different than an impression or a click to your website. They're spending 30 minutes or 45 minutes of their time, like listening and immersing yourself in your brand. So I think it takes a while to grow a show and a hundred downloads is amazing and it'll only go up from there, right.
So don't be too discouraged and just, you know, keep at it and keep growing it.
Jeremiah: Hey there, welcome to Brands that Podcast. Each week we talk with the people running podcast strategies at successful brands so you can learn how to grow your company through podcasting.
Today's guest is Kate Young host writer and producer of the, This is Purdue podcast. I wanted to talk to Kate because Purdue University is known worldwide and I wanted to learn more about the success of their show. We talked to a lot of businesses on this podcast and I wanted to find out why a brand like Purdue would start a podcast, how they're measuring success with it, what their goals are with it, and how they're using it to impact growth of the university.
And this episode, you'll hear how they grew to 116,000 listens in 2021, all the ways the podcast is impacting the university for the better, how they use Facebook podcasts to increase downloads by a large margin and a ton more.
Kate, my friend, welcome to Brands that Podcast. Thank you for joining me. I'm super excited to talk with you today.
Kate Young: Oh, I'm honored. This is so cool. But normally I'm the one asking questions and hosting. So I'm excited to be a guest.
Jeremiah: I know. And I'm super excited because most of the guests that we have had on are in the B2B space or like in the software space, you're doing something super different working with a university.
So this is like gonna be an awesome episode for other universities listening or like other use cases and stuff like that. So to catch listeners up, I want you to tell me if this summary is correct. So basically, you host produce like flagship show. It's the only show you're running. Right? Right. You have done 52 while the show has had 52 episodes, roughly, since I made these show notes since January of 2020, it's sort of like a narrative interview hybrid. Like you do interviews, but you overlay these like cool, like stylistic narrative moments, which is cool, like different than the typical Q and a. This is what blows me away. You got 116,000 listens in 2021 and 10 million impressions on social. Yeah.
Kate Young: Yes. Yes. We had huge growth from when the show started in January, 2020. Obviously, you know, that was right before COVID, uh, graduate students started our podcast and it's the official university podcasts. So from what I can tell in the big 10, we're the only kind of like storytelling podcasts, you know, there's daily news, five minute episodes.
There's a ton of athletics episodes that universities have, but this is the official university podcast. You know, I work directly for Purdue and we just feature alumni, professors, students, at a lot of athletic stuff, a lot of coaches that, you know, lead our sports and athletics teams. So it's been amazing because I went to Purdue.
So I think anyone out there that's thinking about starting a, a higher ed podcast, I do think it's important. And I know it was important to pre-do that the host is an alumni just because you know, the culture and, you know, and you probably love where you went to college and you have all these fond memories.
So I think that's been. It's special for me as well.
Jeremiah: Can you unpack a little bit more about your role because you are the host, writer, and producer, right? Like you work with a small team, but can you unpack a little bit more? Like, what does a typical like week or month, like what does that look like for you?
Sure.
Kate Young: So we find guests, a lot of our writers have these incredible stories. Um, you know, it's Purdue university. We, we have a lot of ties to space to NASA. You know, we're, well-known with athletics, a big 10 school. There's tons of stories. Right? Well, we'll never run out of stories, but you know, I kind of find guests that we think would be a good fit.
Um, we try to find, you know, different topics so we could do a topic on our basketball coach, Matt. And then go right into a story about a professor who's made this drug that is saving people's lives, who have ovarian cancer. So it really differs. We released biweekly. So from there, basically I find these guests, I booked the guests.
I use Riverside as our video platform. Um, if it's remote and we've actually started to do some of our interviews in person. So we have our video team have these awesome setups with all these camera angles as if it's like 60 minutes. Yeah. It looks
Jeremiah: super pro I've seen, I've seen some of it.
Kate Young: It's amazing.
Our video team. I can't like thank them enough. And that's a lot of our growth, you know, came from. Utilizing these podcasts and putting them on YouTube, thanks to our video crew, having these grand setups. And it also is really nice for our guests. Like we're giving them this VIP treatment of, you know, this isn't an interns Purdue podcast, right?
Like this is a big deal. We're representing the brand of Purdue. So with that being said, so we booked the interview. I do a ton of research on. I'm the one kind of in contact with the guests throughout the process. So yeah, we do the interview from there. I take the interview, I use a tool called descript more.
I can kind of cut up different pieces and I wasn't sure which route we were going to take. Once I started at Purdue with the way the podcast works, but I started to kind of craft a script around my first interview. And from there it just felt right to, you know, how. There's so many things that you don't get into in the actual interview.
So I wanted to empower listeners and have them hear all this background information as well.
Jeremiah: Oh, cool. Cool, cool. So you'll bake that into like the narrative
Kate Young: part. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I'm kind of maybe telling the background of a guest's history. You know, they can't mention an hour long interview. It would take, you know, an eight hour interview to get every, everything out of them.
So I'm doing all this research after the interview as well. Certain facts or statistics. Um, so yeah, there's a lot of that. So the script writing is my main, you know, those take a while to write. And then from there I record that postscript, but I say I'm a producer because I am leading the direction of where the episodes going to go.
And I S you know, writer, I write the show notes, I write the social posts that accompany every episode, we have a really great design team that works on all of our podcast graphics to keep that Purdue brand in line, our videographers, you know, cut these clips for social media that that always do really well.
And then of course utilizing our YouTube strategy, which started in April, 2021. And I have to say that's where we've seen just so much growth by putting the podcast on
Jeremiah: YouTube. Interesting. Do you do anything like different to optimize it there? Or do you literally just like match the like podcast episode title with the YouTube title and kind of let it go?
Kate Young: We definitely optimize, you know, we do all the keyword research. There's some paid strategy of course, as well. So we're boosting some of the videos. What I do is we'll take that, that grand interview set up if it's in person and we'll put that whole interview. So if it's a 40 minute interview, Matt, painter's a great one.
So we did that on the floor at Mackey arena. And so many alumni want to see that visual of, oh my gosh, they're in an empty Mackey arena and, oh, there's the nostalgia of, I went to a game there and I want to see coach painter talk about all these, you know, all these different things. So that's been really, really cool.
You know, we interviewed the president, president, Mitch Daniels in his office. So I think people enjoy kind of seeing the behind the scenes of, oh, wow, this is the president's office. So we put that onto YouTube, but we also take the full episode and I use wave. Um, you can use, you know, headline or anything like that.
And I put that, just that audio of the podcast on YouTube. We're using the metrics and the views from both of those go into my goal of hitting X number of downloads per year. Wow.
Jeremiah: And by the way you told me before we hit record, you won two Addy awards. So congratulations on that. You
Kate Young: I'm like
Jeremiah: so proud.
Yeah. You should be. That's super exciting. So obviously this is an incredible production. Do you set those goals for the social numbers and stuff of like what you think you'll hit or is that set by like a Purdue marketing team or
Kate Young: something? Yeah. So Purdue marketing and communications, our team's about 70 people.
So all of us have, you know, these yearly goals that we want to try to hit. So I remember when I first, I came to Purdue in March and we started setting our goals in April may and based on the numbers from the previous year, you know, We talked about, oh, let's, let's make our goal 30,000 downloads. Let's make it 50.
And then it was quickly like we're going to go all in. We're going to go for this. So the goal was to get 75,000 downloads and that included YouTube views for me though. So that's where I'm utilizing that, that YouTube strategy that's counting towards our numbers and our goals. As of we judge our goals April to April, we are 195% over our goals.
And we're almost 150,000 downloads. So we really, you know, crush that goal. I'm sure we'll have a much higher goal as we go into 2022 to 2023. Can you
Jeremiah: see the download numbers? Like for people that aren't listening? The average, I think somewhere falls between like is around 500 downloads per episode. So you all are like significantly above that for like year one of, of like you taking this over, which is just incredible.
And I'm really curious, like what's the driving force behind the show. So like, it wasn't started by you. They brought you in to sort of run it and take it and grow. It. Does the marketing and comms team have like an overall, like it's such a wide reaching. That just seems to tie the show to every relevant, like good thing that Purdue is impacting on the world.
So is this like a brand play that they're like looking to just kind of like get the Purdue bread and messaging out? Is it an enrollment play? Like, are they kind of trying to find a way to like, Qualitatively here. How many, like new students were driven by the show? Like what are the things that you have heard that they're kind of looking to get
Kate Young: out of this?
Yeah, I think overall it's, it's a ton of brand awareness. So like I said, you know, you can write all the stories you want about these amazing Purdue people and these people within the Purdue committee. But how cool is it to actually, you know, listen to their voice and listen to their story and get all these, you know, facts while you're going for a run or doing the dishes or, you know, walking your dog.
So it was a lot, I'm really lucky that they really like went all in and invested in this podcast. And like I said, you know, we're the only school in the big 10, you know, doing this and investing the strategy. So I think it's a little bit of everything that you just said, you know, when it comes to enrollment, I've spoken at our, um, big freshmen, you know, there's like 10,000 new freshmen on campus and I got to moderate a session and, um, talk at that and talk about the podcast and, you know, 18 year olds are like running by like Purdue has a podcast? That's so cool.
I'm like, yeah. It's awesome. So just hearing kind of that, that kind of feedback of, oh wow. My university has a podcast, you know, from an 18 year old, that's been really rewarding and cool to see. And some of our episodes, you know, don't target students, we're targeting more alumni or even staff and stuff like that.
There are episodes that are really geared towards students. So I definitely think we're, we've grown our alumni audience, but on the other hand, you know, some alumni don't know what podcasts are, right? Some non tech savvy or older people, aren't going to know what that purple app on their iPhone is. So that's kind of where that YouTube strategy comes in.
You know, I personally don't listen to podcasts on YouTube, but I've heard so many people who do, and then if you're already on Purdue's YouTube channel and you're watching a video and then the podcast. And that could lead to, oh, I didn't know Purdue had a podcast and then, you know, they're subscribing to it or they're tuning in every other Thursday on YouTube because they know that video is coming out.
So there's a lot of different tactics. Another one is we started adding it to Facebook and our numbers exploded like the clips. No. Well, so we added the RSS feed to Facebook and you can listen on your mobile device through Facebook. And I am telling you Jeremiah, the day that we did that, that next. It's skyrocketed.
So it's free, you know, like I said, if, if some of these older alumni are on Facebook, but they don't necessarily know what a podcast is. They see that. And our numbers have really exploded after that tactic. And like I said, it's free, you just connect your apple RSS feed to Facebook and people can listen through there now.
Like
Jeremiah: I've never seen this. It like pulls up on Facebook. Like it would just like, let people know, like you, I guess it would be shared from the Purdue. Yeah.
Kate Young: So it's from our professional business page. So if you're a business out there and you have a business Facebook page, which a lot of you I'm sure do, it's on the tabs on the left hand side, like where you would find, you know, photos or information, there's a PO if, once you add your podcast, there's a podcast, a little tab.
Jeremiah: Wow. Okay. That's a great
Kate Young: tip. Yeah. And when the episode we started doing that in November. So this is recently new that Facebook added this, but every time it's automatic. So every time an episode is coming out on apple, you know, every other Thursday, it's also coming out on Facebook for
Jeremiah: people, you have to announce it.
So you don't have to do anything to like share it. Like it will just say out on the page, like, Hey, here's new episodes.
Kate Young: Yeah. And of course we share all of our podcasts on all of our social media accounts, which definitely has contributed to the growth of our metrics and our numbers. But that Facebook tactic, that was something, you know, we were getting.
You mentioned like 500 downloads an episode we were getting when I first started probably 500 to a thousand downloads per episode. Now we're looking at eight, nine, 10,000 per episode. So there's a number of things we've done. But I just specifically remember that day in November, seeing that huge trajectory of growth that a huge spike in the graph.
That's what chase did for us. So yeah. It's like I said, free really easy to set up.
Jeremiah: Yeah. That's a great tip. So it sounds like overall it's such a good play because. You're kind of starting with, so I'm curious, you're starting with this like really big show. It's kind of all encompassing. It's this amazing production it's proven that people are enjoying it.
It's going up into the right. I imagine you're like you say, you've got a few audiences produced, probably talking to from like a marketing brand perspective. It's like new students probably like alumni for like probably like fundraising, things like that. And then just being like known in the wider world of like accomplishment competing against other universities.
Do you anticipate, like, have you and the team talked about doing any, any more like niche shows for the university in the future where like, you'll just do one for perspective enrollments where like you let them like listen in to like classes or something like that. Or like what life at Purdue is like, or something like
Kate Young: that.
We haven't talked about that, but there's so many ideas that could stem from that, you know, right off the top of my head, we have this incredible intern program called the boiler ambassador. I could totally see them starting their own kind of sub set under the, This is Purdue umbrella of, Hey, this is what we're doing as students.
And, you know, this is what our lives are like. And here's some tips for incoming freshmen and kind of almost like that boiler ambassador brand and you know, any of the school of technology, the school of science, any of those, we have a huge engineering program. I could totally see, you know, successful podcast branching under this.
And having that it hasn't been discussed yet, but it's certainly an opportunity to build even more brand awareness. It's just seems
Jeremiah: like such an incredible opportunity. And the fact that it's played so well, like I think people listening, like who may not be familiar with the space to understand how difficult it is to take or, you know, well, like, cause we've worked together on this was like trying to do.
A broad concept to a broad audience is really hard to go to market with the fact that you've had so much success with that. It just feels like some more like knit shows for that, where it's like student life for like whatever it may be. Are you like competitive? Do you like check out if other universities and like the top 10 or whatever are, uh, is it big 10 or top 10?
Big time. I'm sounding like a newb in the top 10 universities are any in the big 10, like competing with you all podcasting wise. Are you like top charts? Anything? Or do you like keep tabs on that at all? That's
Kate Young: where I've done that research and seen. Okay. So they're doing athletics. A lot of them too are there's fan podcasts out there, right?
Like big 10 schools are really well known. So they have either alumni or just fans. That's a hobby podcast out there, but our show is so special. We're the official university podcast. Our brand is so apparent and consistent. Because it's part of the Purdue marketing and communications department. So I think we really shine in that area.
Have
Jeremiah: you been invited on any Purdue fan shows yet? I feel like that's upcoming. I
Kate Young: haven't, I would love to, you know, I've been invited to, um, different, you know, I'm speaking at a women's conference, a pretty women's conference. I'm really excited about. I was asked to do kind of a zoom session. It's called cocktails and conversation for our Purdue for life, which is our alumni foundation.
Um, so you know, there's a hundred people on the zoom call and I'm kind of walking them through the podcast process and kind of behind the scenes stories. Um, and they got to ask me questions. So that was super fun. And like I said, just being involved in this. Students stuff like I've talked to different classes and I actually, oh, this was cool.
One of my old professors teach us a podcast class. I reached out to him. I have a different name because now I'm married. But I said, Hey, do you know who this is? Like, I took your classes. And he was like, oh Kate, you know, of course I know you, I just didn't recognize your name. So I got to go see him and talk to his class and answer all of their questions.
So it's been just so rewarding, you know? For some, you know, a place, this huge institution that I have so many fond memories of. Right?
Jeremiah: Yeah. That's super exciting. That's really cool. What does the re-purposing like, can you talk a little bit more about that? Like, are you then using descript or whatever tool to basically like find moments.
That you think are going to play well, and then you're trying to, like, I know you mentioned pre-call, you're working closely with the social media team. So what does that interplay look like? Like how are you utilizing the podcast on social?
Kate Young: We've tested a couple of different things. You know, we started out doing those audio grams.
So again, using programs that are like they're only $30 a month are really inexpensive and it's a great marketing tool. So the audio grams are these, these little video clips are. Captioned and they're taking a minute, you know, really strong moments and quotes from the episode and sharing them on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Um, we have a huge audience on LinkedIn. Again, really strong alumni audience on there. We've also started doing some Tik Toks. So we've been working with these boiler ambassadors. I don't have TikTok I'm not that cool, but I work, I work with them to try to get things, you know, to like once again, appeal to students and just advertise the fact that, you know, your university has a podcast.
So we've done some cool things with TikTok. Another thing that we started doing, our quote graphics. So we take. I have this awesome photography department as well. So when we're onsite for these interviews, we get these amazing lifestyle headshots for these branded graphics. So if you have the opportunity to do something like that, definitely do it.
It makes such a difference. Kind of like using their own LinkedIn headshot. Right. So, um, we take those photos and we put again in our pretty branded colors, these really strong quotes. So those have done really well. We've seen on social and then we take, you know, when we do have these big video interviews, we take.
Clips and keep them under a minute and share those as well. So, you know, we have like our certain podcasts music and our podcast logo. And so it's all branded and really consistent. And I think even though that's, that's just organic social media, you know, we're lucky because we have so many followers, you know, being Purdue university.
So we have those numbers on our side, but I think that's. Reason that the show has grown. It's like consistent marketing every other Thursday, our listeners and our audience know it's coming and the team and, you know, we've just built. Kind of content machine, I guess. What
Jeremiah: impact have you seen? Like has the social media team been able to say, like these were our numbers before the podcast, and this is kind of like the consistent lift that that added content has
Kate Young: given.
We have all these reporting techniques that are at our hands, but there's so many different things. So for example, when we talk about podcast impressions, our PR and news team does a great job. When they're pitching produce stories that are, you know, world renowned, they add our podcast clips into that article.
So then they're pitching to, you know, BBC or even Indianapolis news stations, or they're always pitching to national news outlets. But so they're putting that podcast and embedding that within that article. So that. We're seeing all of these impressions and I have great story. If anyone follows football college football closely, you may remember when Notre Dame would not allow, produce big bass drum into its stadium.
Jeremiah: Wait, I don't know about this story. I don't follow this follow cause I call universities the top 10. So tell me about this story.
Kate Young: Yeah. So Notre Dame football in south bend, Indiana. Very big football school. You know, I would say it's one of Purdue's rivals and we've had, we have this iconic big bass drum and it's been around for a hundred years and I did a podcast episode on it and the timing, just the stars aligned and the timing with the story.
So the podcast went out on a Thursday and talked about the history of the big bass drum. And we have this amazing it's called the all American marching band at Purdue. Again, world renown. They go all over the world. They've been in parades in the Ireland and the rose bowl and all that good stuff. So this drum is a key part of the band and Notre Dame had just done something to their stadium and they didn't want the drum there because it couldn't like get down the stairs or something.
So. This was the first time in 70 something years at the drum, wasn't going to be part of a football performance. So Purdue fans were not happy and it blew up. It was an ESPN, it was in sports illustrated. It was in all these national news outlets. And so in the meantime, the podcast had come out. So the impressions were so off the charts that are host podcasts.
I thought that there was a glitch.
Jeremiah: Why are you serious? This is so
Kate Young: interesting. So the, when we talk about, you know, looking at the graphs and the peaks and stuff that day, it was September of 2021. I mean, it's, it was just really crazy. So the impressions are from people seeing that in embed code and like knowing about the podcast and about that episode.
And so that's what we were tracking. And of course not everyone who looked at that article or dug into it, listened to the episode, but that was definitely one of our most listened to episodes of the year due to the timing and the circumstances.
Jeremiah: I can't imagine having so much, uh, it's like getting like a tech crunch feature and seeing such a spike you're like this Google analytics, like working.
That's so crazy. I'm curious on the PR front, you mentioned like. Will the PR team take what you've done and then craft a narrative around that and like go pitch using that as like more compelling reasons to like share or is it like they have their own set of stories. They're not working with you, but if you happen to have covered it, they'll just grab them.
Kate Young: Yeah, it's both. So, you know, when I interviewed president Mitch Daniels, he's done an incredible job leading Purdue. Our tuition has been frozen for 11 years. That's unheard of in higher ed and with the pandemic, we've had this huge protect Purdue initiative that, um, has allowed students and professors and everyone to stay in class and be on campus and experience college.
With wearing masks and, you know, sanitizing and all these measures. So people were really interested with that interview of, and I believe I titled it leading Purdue through the pandemic. Here Mitch Daniels is former Indiana. Governor is really well known. He's really highly respected. So they definitely used that and pitch that to a lot of both national media and Indiana media.
And it was cool that we kind of got that first scoop of habit. This president, you know, do this and, and it, it was all successful and students stayed up Purdue and tuition frozen yet again. That was definitely kind of like a podcast scoop that we got and then they pitched that story out for sure. Wow.
Jeremiah: That's amazing. So, yeah, like I think that's a super interesting takeaway for companies that work with PR departments is like, this is a use case I've never heard before. Like in all the brands that we're talking to, I've never heard a company articulate, like. I've heard them, maybe some companies are pairing closely with the social media team.
I think a lot are not really utilizing, like re-purposing like they could, but I've never heard of like the PR team utilizing the brand's podcast in order to like take click. And this is especially why, I guess it's good. Like here's a good takeaway to invest in good video as well, like a good video, because then essentially if you're listening and you haven't seen it, do you have to go check these out?
They're very, very high quality productions. And so they're taking these and I'm guessing this just makes it. A more compelling and easier pitch for the PR team, because they're able to say, we'll give you this asset, have an amazing, like produced video. You can use, it shows like the production and the quality behind everything and gives more like relevancy to the story.
Kate Young: Yeah, absolutely. And having those video clips and then, you know, news stations being able to grab some B roll for their newscasts at 6:00 PM or grab some audio from the podcast, it's all kind of in these nice little kits. And another thing when. A nice little kit, another tactic that I think, you know, I think people do it, but they don't understand.
I just in early February had a really good use case for when guests share your show, the growth can explode. I mean, We had, um, a black history month podcast. We featured three black alumni from Purdue doing amazing things. And one of them's a news reporter and she shared the episode multiple times on her Twitter.
Well then her colleagues started sharing it. Her new station in Texas shared it, her friends shared it, and we're seeing all this engagement in all of. Spikes and downloads and just from one person sharing it. Um, she shared it on LinkedIn and there was all these comments on LinkedIn. So it's so important to give your guest this nice little package that they can take away, social copy the graphics.
They can share these beautiful graphics of their headshots, you know, and, and what they contributed to the episode. So every time when an episode goes live, w whatever morning that might be for you. You know, link to apple, Spotify, YouTube, share the graphics with them and make it this nice little organized.
That's
Jeremiah: why I was going to ask what goes into this and like, what's your practice around that? So it sounds like it's a graphic. Do you ever give them like a video clip or anything? Or like what, like, do you give them, do they typically like, know what to say about the episode? Or do you give them some talking points?
Like walk me through what goes into like a package of listeners want to create.
Kate Young: Sure. So, like I said, all of the links, I always include Spotify and apple of course our Purdue website. It's the episodes live on there and then YouTube. So that way they can share on their favorite platform. And then, you know, just kind of bullet points of social.
You know, rough ideas of what they could use and then these content graphics. So Instagram, LinkedIn, and for every platform. And that will include the quote graphics that I talked about. It might include, you know, the 30-second video or the one minute video that they can include as well. It's kind of just. Very formatted, bulleted, nice email that they can take and share.
And when they actually share, it really makes a difference
Jeremiah: out of curiosity, like, like roughly not exact numbers, but how many end up sharing versus like not sharing when you send
Kate Young: that. This is super interesting. I think people think that they're bragging about themselves if they share it. I think there's a little bit of that, but.
I would say only maybe like 70% don't share it. That could be a number of different reasons.
Jeremiah: 70% don't share it.
Kate Young: No. Wow. Okay. That's why I say when people do share, it's so noticeable and immediately I, I see these spikes and I'm going to our Twitter and seeing all the mentions and how this guests shared it.
But I think a lot of times people are like, oh, I don't want to brag about myself or they just don't have time. Or, um, so I try to make messaging that's. Post this to your Facebook, you know, I'm sure all of your friends and family want to hear it, or, you know, just something to encourage that. Students who are on it usually share it because they're excited for the opportunity.
Another thing we do is like partner with our campus partners. So when coach Matt painter or our new women's basketball coach, Katie Gerald's is on the episode. We have athletics, put it on their homepage. So we're working with their marketing department and communications department to get to as many eyeballs.
As possible.
Jeremiah: I was like, I was like, is this the slang term? But I also don't know. Yeah, no, it's incredible. I mean, if you're saying that the spike is that noticeable, it seems like that's not a good takeaway for listeners. Like some way to find out how to optimize more of that. Like that would be almost a metric.
It sounds like for a lot of companies doing this worth tracking is like, how many guests do we have sharing it month over month? And how can we like make it maybe more compelling? To share the episode. It's hard. Right? Cause like I know Claudia and I feel that way about this show. Like we've tried to approach it like, like we don't want to use people for their like outlet.
We just want it to be. This is the clip. And we'll give you the full, raw video. Like, if you want, we'll give you the raw audio, like whatever you want to share, we'll share it. So it's like, I get the struggle because you're like, I think I agree with you. Like, that's a point I had not thought of. Maybe some people are too do feel a little self-conscious about it.
And I think other people maybe are not asking their fans or their guests to share it because it feels like, oh, I don't want to come across as like. Go ahead and promote us or whatever. And, um, so it's tough to strike that balance. I think we were like, truly only if this benefits you, but like this is an episode that you're in and we think it's amazing.
So if you want to share it, you
Kate Young: know, we'll say if you have guests from certain companies, get in touch, find their marketing person, somehow get their marketing person or their PR lead to share it on their company's social media. So that's where our campus partners come in. You know, I'm, I'm not telling coach painter to post this on his Twitter, right?
Like I'm asking athletics, Hey, can you put it on our boiler ball channels, which is our official Purdue all channels. So that's another tactic to definitely. You know, when we see the certain channels sharing it, we also see those spikes. But in this case, this, you know, guest herself who is a young woman, was so excited to share that she was on produced podcast.
It was just great to see all of that engagement. Just by her doing
Jeremiah: that. I'm curious. I have one more question for you that I had been asking as a consistent, last question. But before that I was talking with, uh, Justin Jackson, who co-founded transistor the hosting platform. We love and have been promoting.
He was mentioning the, I thought this was a really cool thing. Like he was talking about how more companies need to be treating like the primary metric to measure on their show the response rate, I think is what he said, or like the impact the show is making by like unsolicited emails about it, or like people shouting it out on social or sharing it with friends.
Do you kind of like, even if there's no. Well, if there's a direct way, I'd love to hear it, but do you have like a sort of just non-official way that you kind of like brow. The internet and kind of just like, see what the buzz is about or what people are saying. And like, have you gotten unsolicited message or like, does social get DMS to like, you know, the, the social account about it and stuff like that?
Like what, what kind of stuff do you hear as far as that and how does that play in. I know you're tracking like social impressions and downloads mainly, but does that, how does that make you feel that you're doing the right thing or headed the right way? Yeah, that's
Kate Young: a great question. So there's a couple of different stories that come to mind, you know, as the show is growing, we're getting a ton of Facebook messages or even.
You know, we're posting the podcast episode on Facebook and in the comments, people are like, oh, I know someone at Purdue, who's doing this. They would be a great person to interview. So there's just more awareness around that. I always tell people, anytime, you know, again, I, I live in Indiana, so Butler university or, um, ball state, or, you know, my husband went to IU.
He went to our rival school when those people and those friends that went to those other schools listened to a Purdue episode. And think it's really cool. That's like the ultimate compliment to me. Right? Because they are not tied to Purdue. They aren't in that community.
Jeremiah: Haven't
Kate Young: drunk boilermaker Kool-Aid.
So when you think about these people who don't have those special ties to Purdue, thinking that in an episode is interesting, you know, that's just a really big compliment, right? And that, that we're telling a story that's cool enough and interesting enough. And. People are enjoying it. That's the ultimate
Jeremiah: goal.
That's amazing. Such a good takeaway. Yeah. I think it sounds like this is just an incredible brand play for the university and I think I'm so excited for the growth you've had. I'm super happy for you on a friend personal level for the awards you've won and like all that you're doing with the show. All right.
My last question. What advice do you have for companies considering starting a podcast? I know you'll answer this one a bit different, probably from some insights. It's a different world being in the university space. But any advice, like if a company is thinking about utilizing podcasts, whether it's tours or starting their own branded show or doing ads, or like anything you've seen from this space, is there any like recommendations you would have is just like, by way of like suggestions, getting.
Kate Young: Yes, I think right now there's kind of this myth out there. Oh, there's so many podcasts. Well, there are, but you know, I went to podcast movement in August and they shared that, you know, there's probably at this point over a million podcasts out there, but only 322,000 of them are active. So some of these shows out there have produced an episode, seen how much work goes into it, or they've really seven.
And they're like, okay, this isn't fulfilling to me. I'm done. This is too much work I'm done. So really, if you start a podcast or now you are at the forefront of this whole industry and getting into this and getting into this as a brand play and like a marketing play, and there's so many different routes you can take with the podcast, you can.
I know we've talked about, you know, like the internal ones for employees to listen to. Or like I mentioned previously, you know, if you have interns, they could start one about company culture or, you know, university culture. So there's so many different ways you can go with it. When you look at everyone was jumping on the blog trend, but podcasts, you know, there's way fewer podcasts than there are blogs.
Jumping into the space and getting involved at, uh, at this early in the game, even though you think there's so many podcasts out there that there's really not. And just with the growth of, you know, this podcast, I'm very curious at how many other higher ed podcasts will emerge. And I'm proud to say that.
At the forefront of it. I love that
Jeremiah: advice. It's like, it makes me think like, yeah, if you're a brand is saying, I mean, I wouldn't say it's like for every brand at every life stage of the company, but yeah, if you're saying like, your primary reason is because it's too flooded, but you're on YouTube or you're publishing a blog, you expect people to read.
It's like, well, both of those are way more saturated than the podcast space. So I would also
Kate Young: say really quick. I just want to touch on. If you're down about downloads, if you're not
Jeremiah: happy with
Kate Young: that could be a podcast as well. So if you're not happy with, with your downloads, I think Jeremiah heard you reference this and another Brands that Podcast episode, if you would be excited to speak to a hundred people in a virtual conference, or if you want to hop on a plane and go speak in front of 500 people, if you're excited about.
And you're having a hundred people or 500 people or a thousand people listening to this branded content for 30 minutes. It's so different than an impression or a click to your website. It's, they're spending 30 minutes or 45 minutes of their time, like listening and immersing their self and your brand.
So I think it takes a while to grow show and a hundred dollars. Is amazing. And it'll only go up from there, right? So don't be too discouraged and just, you know, keep at it and keep growing it. And I know, I know, you know that, but just a, a word of advice from, from someone. And if you're, if you have to kind of justify, you know, your numbers, you can tell people that, you know, this is such a different, medium than posting a tweet.
Or like I said, clicking through, you know, to read a two minute article. This is they're spending quality time with your brain. And hearing these stories. So I think that's an important note. I love
Jeremiah: it. I'm not going to add anything because that's the perfect way to end this interview. Thank you so much.
I'm so excited for, to follow your work, to see what you keep doing with the show. I'm excited to interview you. The Perdue podcast network. Next time that you end up starting, thanks for all your time. And, uh, we'll talk to you a little bit
Kate Young: later. Thank you so much, Jeremiah.
Jeremiah: Thanks so much for checking out this episode. If there's a company you'd like us to interview or a question you want us to answer on the show, just let us know. You can ask us at brandsthatpodcast.com or DM or tag Lemonpie on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram. And if you want to reach your audience on podcasts, that they're already listening to be sure to check out lemonpie.fm.