Marketing Facebook's new podcast

• Pacific Content, the company behind the new Facebook Podcast Three and a Half Degrees: The Power of Connection, have written up nine marketing lessons for your podcast, working with Facebook’s team. The post includes some savvy use of offline media (coffee cup sleeves, aimed at commuters) and some extra-clever use of Facebook itself.

• Another form of marketing: paid-for ads on the popular iOS app Overcasts. A Redditor posts their experience of booking ads, and gives some hints on how to get the most out of it.

  
  Aug 9 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Podfest in Orlando FL, USA - March 7-9 - is one of the big podcasting events of the year. Podnews is in Malaysia on March 7th, but trying our hardest to be there for the other two days. Whisper: 15% discount code? You’ll want to use NEWYEAR19

• Amazon Alexa has unveiled “a professional newscaster voice”, which they plan to use for news briefings and other similar pieces of work. The post includes excerpts of the voice, which contains all the right cadences for news broadcasts.

• The Pod is an interesting new product - a pop-up soundbooth to give recordings better acoustics.

• Last week, we noted that Google Podcasts is beginning to appear in Android Auto, the car navigation and entertainment system from Google. As this update rolls out, it seems that Google Podcasts is visible to every Android Auto user (irrespective of whether they’ve installed the “app”). Google Play says that Android Auto has over 10,000,000 installations, ten times that of the Google Podcasts app.

  
  Aug 9 2023: This broken link now points to the Internet Archive.

• Paul Colligan posts his Podcast Predictions for 2019 in the latest episode of The Podcast Report. He views Pandora as having an “exponentially bigger” impact than Google; he forsees major changes at Apple Podcasts since Apple’s turning into a service company; and thinks Instagram is the future for promoting podcasts. He says that Pandora is his #2 platform currently.

• Voxnest has launched Spreaker Enterprise, described as “enterprise-level podcast hosting”.

• Vice, a youth publisher, plans to launch three new podcast series in Australia. The company’s Viceland TV network is a joint project with broadcaster SBS.

• The Boston Globe covers the history and the present day of podcasting, calling it “a juggernaut”.

• Tribune Media, a US television and media company, is launching the Tribune Audio Network. They’re working with ART19, promising “podcasts produced by Tribune Media’s local and national brands, while also serving as a talent and subject matter incubator”.

• NPR has made Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me into an interactive quiz for smart speakers. It will be updated weekly. Unlike the podcast, the skill appears restricted to the US.

• Alitu, a product that “polishes, brands & publishes your podcast, automatically”, has just released recording within the app. “You can upload your normal recording (from Skype/recorder/computer/etc) and then record a quick intro and outro right there inside Alitu to bookend it, if needed”, Alitu’s CEO, Colin Gray, tells us.

Podcasts

Battle Stations is a seven-part podcast set in a radio station. SAG fm plays soft adult grooves and it also plays host to endless behind the scenes disasters. Can radio announcer and argument enthusiast Ray Easton get his station to number one in a workplace where the only thing more toxic than the staff’s attitude is the coffee? (Nova Entertainment / Acast)

Video games saved Scott C Jones’s life. He’s launched Heavily Pixelated, where he talks to gamers about their most vulnerable moments—whether it’s divorce, illness, or heartbreak—and discovers the games that fortified them when they needed it most.