Written by Guest, Jim Walsh, Executive Director, Walsh:PR
The first podcast I became addicted to was WTF with American stand-up comedian Marc Maron.
What attracted me to WTF was that there was a theme running though the different episodes. Most of Marc Maron’s guests were in the entertainment world and the chats revolved around the creative work behind the scenes, sometimes shows, sometimes music, sometimes movies.
It then seemed to me that podcasts were another communication channel for promoting the Walsh brand.
Covid unwittingly created that opportunity. Working from home (WFH) became the norm in 2020 and a few years later, when the dangers of Covid passed, that requirement in business was relaxed. But for many businesses and their staff, office working five days a week 9 to 5 became a thing of the past. Hybrid working came into vogue and has remained the preference of most workers. At Walsh that became the norm.
One unintended consequence was that we needed less working space in our offices.
We decided to turn one of our spare offices into a recording studio which when fitted out could improve our media training service, record short audio or video clips for our own or our clients’ promotions and be used to record podcasts, which could add another sphere of activity to our promotional programme.
Having fitted out the studio, the podcast Off the Fence with Purpose then came into being.
Purpose is behind all the services at Walsh so helping people to progress their careers with purpose, whether within the company they are employed or in advancing their career elsewhere, became the theme.
Having the guests provide advice and suggestions to achieve that through storytelling became the objective, chatting with guests who had varied careers and who could talk about the key moments in their careers, their mentors plus the impact of making changes had on them and their families.
As bringing the podcast to life required a team with a range of skills, Ellen Gunning was brought in to share the hosting with me. Known as the Data Prophet, Ellen is a PR Consultant, Crisis Communications Specialist, Thought Leader, Author, Broadcaster and Media Commentator. She founded the Irish Academy of Public Relations, she has written the required textbook on PR “Public Relations, A practical approach” published by Macmillan and now in its 3rd edition. Ellen is an in-demand speaker and conference co-ordinator around the world and her latest venture is Mettacomms, a communications platform that enables organisations to access reliable, context-driven information and make data-driven decisions on a global scale.
Having co-presenters on podcasts has become extremely popular in Ireland. The Irish Times recently said that Irish people cannot get enough of ‘double the hosts, double the charm’ podcasts that feel like chats with friends. That is exactly what we set out to achieve rather than replicate a formal radio interview format.
Arranging the technology came next, sourcing the recording/editing was relatively easy. Rather than overburdening ourselves we decided on fortnightly broadcasts. We record two episodes each month over one morning with a sound engineer who then edits the episodes and adds music.
Next step was arranging the publication of the episodes, which we do on Acast with the episodes also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and others. We are lucky to have excellent creative talent at Walsh who design and manage a planned promotional programme for each episode.
To date we have broadcast four episodes and have three more recorded. Episode one was a conversation with myself and Ellen chatting about our respective careers and the lessons learned. The following episodes featured stories from the careers of the CEO of Ireland’s largest building materials merchanting chain, a former journalist who was one of the founders of a national newspaper and is now a communications consultant, chartered director and the CEO of a national charity, who began her career aged 17 as a researcher in a stockbrokers. A variety of careers and sectors.
There are in the region of 4 million podcasts in the world but according to Reddit 90% don’t make it past three episodes.
Thankfully we are not among that 90%. We now have sufficient guests to keep going until the end of the year and are already planning the next phase of expanding the podcast reach.
Listen to the podcast here
