For a while now, our customers have been asking about podcasts and the possibility to offer them as part of our content mix.

It is an area we have been looking at for a while, but have been unsure how exactly to put into action.

There is a unique appeal to podcasts thanks to a sense of intimacy that few other media seem able to attain. You don’t need to read them, you don’t need to watch them, you don’t need to scroll or turn a page. Whether working in an office, driving home from work, or running on a treadmill, audiences need only listen. The happy spinoff is that you have people’s attention when they are engaging in all kinds of activities where reading or viewing just aren’t practical, which is, when you think about it, most of the time.

And unlike linear radio, audiences can pick and download the shows of their liking wherever and whenever they wish.

It’s a medium that allows programmers – and brands – to speak directly into the ear of the consumer.

The numbers back this up. A study recently published about Canadian podcast listeners indicates that nearly 10 million adults listen to podcasts, and 39% of Canadians 18 to 34 listen at least once a month. That number jumps to 46% when you’re counting only males 18 to 34.

Moreover, 58% of all adult listeners have a post-secondary education and 29% earn over 100K. These are very compelling numbers. Simply put, the podcast audience is a well-healed, highly educated and desirable demographic.

And a great many are young entrepreneurs. This is borne out by the fact that many of the most popular podcasts in the market are focused on business insights.

So, for The Streaming Network, podcasts are clearly an area where we can strategically help our clients elevate their thought leadership in the B2B space.

Enter Peter Vamos.

Peter joined our organization over the summer coming in to help us develop products in the social content space, particularly around video. Peter, a journalist by training, was head of digital video at several major Canadian news media brands including The Toronto Star. But he has also been very active in the podcast space, particularly over the last year, a period in which podcasting in Canada has really begun to emerge.

It was probably in our first meeting that the topic of podcasts came up. Peter suggested that we could leverage our current production capabilities including our studio and create a short podcast series on the business of webinars.

For me, it was a no-brainer. I saw it as a chance to promote my business to a young, business-focused demographic through a new medium. But, perhaps, more importantly, it was as a trial balloon to see if this was a product we could offer clients.

The process couldn’t have been easier. Peter did a round of research to familiarize himself with webinars, an area that intrigued him, but of which he knew very little. Then we did a series of pre-interviews where Peter dug into the nuances of the business and formulated questions. Once this brief phase was complete, we booked the studio, sat down and recorded six episodes in less than one day. We also shot videos of the interviews. So, we now have a podcast series, a video series and a bunch of assets that we can cut into snackable video segments for social media promotion.

Best of all, my experience leads me to conclude that we do indeed have a great new product which we can offer clients that will further highlight their thought leadership and promote their businesses to a hard-to-reach millennial audience.

Here is the first episode in our six-part series “The Webinar: Lessons from the Frontline”

Let me know what you think.

And check out this card trick where I liken our understanding of webinar data to one of the oldest card tricks in the book. I may not be sure why it works, but I’m 100 percent sure that what the data tells us is spot on.

Matt