Purpose
The purpose of my podcast was to learn and apply communication skills such as interviewing, editing, and advertising, and to create a space for people to share their stories. I chose to develop these skills through this project because it’s a topic that fascinates me, and a medium I have always been drawn to. I also wanted to learn how to better use social media as a tool for advertising.
Project
These first 2 pictures are my stats from Anchor. The podcast did fairly well, and got a few hundred plays. Interestingly, the most played episodes were the longest ones. That may be due to the fact that it was the first episode when people were the most excited and the Halloween special when I had 3 guests instead of just one. I kept that in mind as I recorded my following episodes, trying to reach the most people possible.
These next 2 pictures are of the Instagram page I made. Luckily, I had help from a friend so it looks professional. Initially, I was going to have it be a casual page to just update people on episodes, but it reached hundreds of people, and even non followers liked the reels I would post.
These final 2 pictures are of the actual podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. I released 8 episodes and one trailer.
Challenges
Some challenges I ran into with this project was growing an audience. Since the topic was so specific, there was only a small audience I could appeal to: those who attend BYUI who have cringy dating/roommate stories. I found that it was difficult to get men to be willing to tell their stories, so that also cut off a large part of that audience. This podcast depended heavily on audience interaction, and since the audience was so small, I didn’t get as much as I needed. I got about 250 followers on Instagram, and only about 15 people interacted with posts.
Process
My process was pretty simple. I had a pool of people who told me they had stories, so I would select one and set up a time to interview them. I got a basic rundown of their story, and then I thought of a story I had that related to theirs. On the show, we would spend a couple minutes getting to know the guest, then they would tell their story, I would tell my story, and then we would read an anonymous story submitted to a google form in the Instagram bio. I would then spend about 3-5 hours editing, and then upload it to Spotify and Apple Podcasts using Anchor. I would upload every Friday night, and create an Instagram post earlier in the day advertising the episode and the guest.
Experiences
I had a lot of great experiences, and loved working on this project. Stories started to excite me, and people came to me with crazy stories. For example, the craziest episode was one where a girl reported her roommate to the police because she was stealing, and she is currently in prison with 2 misdemeanors and 2 felonies. I found her through her roommate’s classmate who is my friend. People around me would hear stories and pass them on to me because they knew how much I wanted them. It grew my love for stories and my passion for telling them.
Insights
Something I plan to take away from this project is that everyone has a story that needs to be told. They just need the space to tell their stories. I also learned that everyone is individual and unique, and perceives situations differently. It surprised me how interviewing someone can increase empathy because you understand better where they are coming from. I understand that these skills I developed are useful and enjoyable to develop, and I plan to continue to find opportunities to use and develop these skills.