The Power of Podcasting for Ocean Science Communication

0:00 Since you're listening to this podcast, I'm going to have this assumption that you are a podcast listener, right? You've been listening to this podcast forever, however many days, months, years, and you listen to other podcasts as well. And you realize the benefits of podcasting. You realize that you could multitask while listening to something in your earbuds. You can go for a jog. You can exercise in a different way, like do a workout with weights. You can take your dogs out for a walk. You can sit out in the backyard and garden while having earbuds in and listening to me or anybody else talk about a topic that they're passionate about. And you get to listen to that and you see the benefits of especially doing any kind of science communication, whether it's ocean science or any other kind of science and conservation.

0:44 You understand that the power of having long form podcasts, being able to dive deep into complex information and be able to provide it for you. That's able to listen to while you're doing other things and you're able to consume that not to say that you can understand that you can't understand the science, but sometimes it gets a little complicated. I'm not here talking about a Nova's and try squares and all that kind of stuff and T tests and everything like that. I'm talking about what the implications are for certain projects, research and everything like that and decisions that are made in politics to the environment, to the ocean. And you understand the power of that because that's what we do here on the podcast. We talk about what is good for the ocean and science communication is great for the ocean, especially when you're using podcasts.

1:27 So if you listen to the material and you like it, you like ocean use, you like ocean conservation, ocean science and you like science communication, hit that follow button because I talk about that Monday to Friday. This week, we are talking all about science communication, the platforms that you can use to really get into science communication for whatever that suits your needs. Yesterday, we talked about short form content. Today, we're talking about long form podcast content. So mostly audio content. We'll get into the video in just a second, but mostly audio content. And we're going to talk about why it's important to do all that kind of stuff. And of course, tomorrow I've got a special announcement Thursday. We're talking about YouTube and live streaming. And then on Friday, we have an interview with Amy, Amy Weldon, who is talking about her new season on her podcast, Blue Collar White Coat, which you're going to hear all about on Friday.

2:16 Something to definitely listen to. All right, let's get into podcasting because obviously this is one of my favorite mediums. It is my favorite medium, to be honest, as a way to be able to communicate what I would like to do in this world, right? What I would like to do for you and what I would like to do in the conservation world. And it solidified me as not an expert, but definitely an authority in communicating science for many people for potentially you or anybody else who's listening in the audience, who listens to this podcast each and every day or every Monday to Friday or once a week or just the interviews or anything like that. You tend to build into this because it's really important to you. And I think that's cool. I really, I really do. I think to be able to talk to so many of you from all over the world, we're in like 185 countries, right?

3:00 All over the world, over 3 million downloads in the last 11 years. You know, it's been a great experience, right? And so today we're going to be talking about what's important to me about podcasting and what I think, why I think many of you and many organizations should be podcasting. And I think it's definitely a platform that people undervalue from a creation standpoint. But when you get a great eyes, you build that as you have that patience and you and you're able to dedicate the time to do it because it is a lot of time and a lot of work. You are able to create something special and build an audience of of loyal followers and subscribers and people who actually care about what you do.

3:45 And in the ocean world, people care. People care a lot and they're very loyal and they're very passionate. And I think it's it's really important to have that those types of discussions. So with that said, let's talk about podcasting. Obviously, you know, my journey, you know, 11 years into the into podcasting, it's changed my life has helped me get at this job that I met with Pisces Oceans as an ocean communications manager. I know I was never an ocean communications manager before. I never got paid for this kind of stuff to do before. And now that's all changing because of the podcast. It's also allowed me to become an authority around the world for certain parts around the world where people are listening to the podcast on each and every day, even every weekday. You know, that's that's a huge thing for me to be able to spread this news that may or may not have been able to get in their ears or in front of their faces at some point in time.

4:33 So being a resource for the ocean, for a lot of people who listen to this podcast is really important to me. That's why I started this. And it also allows me to introduce people that don't normally get, you know, wide coverage, you know, whether it be online, whether it be on mainstream media. There are a lot of people who are working within the ocean science and conservation fields who are doing amazing things and who are very passionate and are very personable and likable people. And they don't get the in front of the people that I want to get in front of you in front of this audience. So I get to bring those on the people on to be able to talk about what they do. And you get to hear it straight from their mouths and you get to hear about my curiosity in that type of way.

5:15 But I think the benefits I talked a little bit about the big benefit. It's a long form type of content. Right. It could be it could be audio. Now could be video. YouTube is saying that they have podcasts. Now, I should mention that the actual definition of a podcast is something that is spread through an RSS feed. It's an RSS file. Right. So it's a specific type of file. But when you do a YouTube podcast, it is just a YouTube show that has a playlist that is a podcast. And that it's allowing that that category allows it to go on YouTube music. That's all it is. And podcasts do pretty well shows do pretty well on YouTube. And there's a benefit to that. And we'll talk about that in a second. But the benefit of having a podcast, you have a long form podcast, you can talk about complex information like ocean science, like ocean conservation and get into the nuances of the story.

6:04 You can have some great storytelling that is difficult to do in, you know, zero to three minutes, like we talked about yesterday in the short form content. And so you can have people who listen longer. They can multitask is if it's audio, they can multitask. I still listen to YouTube shows while on audio because I can lock my phone of YouTube premium. But other than that, you have to have that open. And so you're kind of watching that, which a lot of people watch on their TVs now. So that's OK. So you can have both platforms. Now, the great part about having both platforms where you have video and audio video because it's on on YouTube. It's very searchable and much better searchable than like the podcast searches. Right. People who search on podcast compared to YouTube, which is owned by Google, which has at one point had the number one search engine optimization site in the world.

6:51 And YouTube is second is is great for being discovered and having search. So if you are good at that and now with a it's a little bit different. But if you're good at that, then you will get searched. So that's always great. And I think that's that's an important thing to think about if that discovery, because as you get a podcast, you can get your your listeners or your viewers on. But eventually it comes to a plateau if you don't start putting it out there and you don't have people sharing to put it out there. I think it's it's important to talk about, you know, discoverability, because if you want to grow your following, that's great. But when you first start doing a podcast, you don't want to have the big following because you're going to make mistakes. You're going to do some weird things.

7:32 Some audio may not come out right. And you want that work up. You want that testing and experimentation to do to go on at the beginning of your journey and not when you're 10 or 11 years in, although I'm always experimenting and stuff like that. But so so like podcasting does have its advantages in having long form. People can listen to it like when they're multitasking, they could really understand the material that you're trying to do in like 30 to 60 minutes or under 20 minutes, whatever that might be. It allows you to do a lot of great things with that. And I think that's that's an important part of communicating, especially stuff when you're talking about, you know, when you're talking about science. Right now, this some still things still apply from from like the short form video to the long form.

8:20 People want to make sure that they know what they're getting into. So the benefit of having a podcast is you're on a podcast app. The person is listening. They will see a title. So that will really get them going. And that's where this really searchables in the title. So if I put ocean in the title and people want to learn about the ocean, that's great. If I put squid, if I put Corey's people will want to know about that. The hook audio wise is really important because people are going to make their decision whether they're going to continue on listening or they've said, hey, you know what? This is not exactly what I expected. So the hook that first. Like 10 seconds, even I think with with with short form, it was like three, one to three seconds. And this one is you probably get like maybe 10 seconds. But even then it might be a little earlier because people are ready to commit a half hour of time.

9:03 They want to make sure that they're getting their full half hour. They're making the best of it. They want to make sure it is what they want to listen to. So when you get a new listener in, you want to make sure that hook is important. Even with people who've been in your audience for a while and will listen to each and every episode or a certain amount of episodes, they still want to know that this is the interest. Like this is the episode that interests them. So that's that's an important aspect as well. Right now, the the algorithm. The algorithm that they have is really interesting because it's not as if you're going to get a news feed of different podcasts on your Spotify app or on your Apple podcast app or whatever you listen to. Right. You are going to get what your feed is like who you followed or who you subscribe to, depending on the app that you're on.

9:47 And so that you're kind of competing with all the other podcasts that there are people are listening to. So you want to make sure that you're in front of them. You've got new stuff. The the title stands out. But the algorithm on the different platforms is the search isn't that great. Spotify, you're competing with music, you're competing with video, you're competing with all these different aspects. It's it's it's a difficult thing to do. And of course, sharing on social media is also it's not as great as people say it is. You know, I share clips, which I just kind of show you what you're getting on the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. But it's also, you know, you need to, you know, you still need to go off platform, whether you're watching Instagram, TikTok or whatever.

10:30 And you have to go on into the podcast platform and find the show and everything like that if you're new to the show. So it's very difficult to share. But once you get that audience, once you get that loyal audience, they they are loyal and they listen to a lot of the shows. And I think that's a really great aspect of it. But to understand that, you know, for you to understand, you have to realize you have to have a lot of people. You have to have a lot of people listening. You have to have a lot of people listening. You have to have a lot of people listening. And then you have to have a lot of patients. It takes years to grow an audience and that is it's a lot of work to put all these shows together and only get like 50 people listening or 100 people listening. It's even more competitive now. And then you realize later on that people aren't listening as many people as you thought. And you a lot of people will podfade or abandon their podcasts because after six episodes, they're like, you know what, this isn't what I expected.

11:14 It's not as viral. I'm not getting up into the charts. There's so many things that are going on. There's so many different podcasts. A lot of people are starting podcasts. They don't continue them, but a lot of people start. At one point, there were 4 million podcasts total, but 400,000 podcasts had released an episode in the last 90 days. And even then, that's pretty generous. So there's still less than a million podcasts that are out there now that are actively producing episodes. But I think the big thing is, is like when you come up with this, just like you do in the short form, you have to be one patient, but you have to understand that it's about the messaging. Who do you want to listen to this? Even if you can do one person or 50 people or anything like that, to be able to watch the video or listen to the audio and listen to the message and take that home and be like, yes, I'm gonna take this home and I'm gonna do something about it.

12:04 That's the power. That's what you're working on. The followers, you can always work on getting more subscribers or whatever that might be, but that's the power of podcasting, is to be able to get your message across in a clear, concise way, to break down complex information and be able to put that forward. Now, the one thing that you have to realize, the format of the episode, anything you want, you can put segments, you can put any length you want, as long as people are listening, you can look at your status to see when people are dropping off and all that kind of stuff. But then what you have to realize is there's a frequency, you have to know when you want to do that, but you also have to realize that it takes a while to build that audience.

12:51 The monetization is different than anything else that I've seen online. There's no creator program, Apple, Spotify, they're not really providing anything. They provide, you'll get your host to be able to produce that and be able to say, hey, we can put in these dynamic ads, put them in, but they have nothing to do with the show that you're doing, or they're getting a little bit better, but I don't like doing that. You can make money on sponsorships to have people sponsor your podcast, but you got to make sure that those sponsorships, those brands fit your brand and make sure that they're in line with it. If you're talking about oceans and you don't want an oil investment ad to pop up, or you don't want someone talking about single-use plastic selling and all that kind of stuff.

13:33 So there's a lot of different things that you can look for, but you have to be careful, it takes some time to go through that. So yeah, I think from a monetization standpoint, it's a little difficult from a communication standpoint, it's on point, it's a lot, it's really cool. You can build your authority and get opportunities from being consistent and posting regularly, whether that be every day, whether that be every week, whether that be every month, it doesn't matter. If you do it consistently, people will start to listen and you will get seen and you will get noticed and different opportunities will happen. I've had other podcast offers. I've had TV shows that I've been on, like three or four of those now.

14:15 I've had job offers and it's actually changed my life. So there's a lot of benefits to podcasting that I think are important that you may not realize and that they are popular, more popular than you think. And what's nice is you can talk about from any angle, you can be as creative as possible, or you can be just, if you want to be just straight up and this is the facts and this is what we're doing, you can talk about that as well. What I would do when if you're considering something, I would start to listen to the podcast that are out there and differentiate yourself from those podcasts so that you're a little bit different and you bring something different to the table. There are a lot of education podcasts out there. There are a lot of conservation podcasts out there.

14:57 Differentiate yourself so that you can hit your niche. It'll be a different audience. It'll be maybe a new audience and then be supportive of other podcasters too. We need more podcasters. We need more people talking about the ocean. It's not a competition. It's a way to build on each other and help each other out and help the ocean out and help the planet out. When these Nature podcasts, it's not a competition. It's collaboration support so that we get our message across. And I think that's something that I feel like is really big. That's it for the episode. If you have any questions about podcasting, equipment, all that, what I would say, you can contact me through my socials.

15:39 The links are in the show notes, but I would say off the bat about equipment. You don't need to spend a lot of money. You can get like a wireless mic or you can just use your headphones that you get. Say those Apple headphones. If you have Apple or any kind of headphones you get and use that as long as it's clear enough that you can hear, then it's working and the content really matters and you can always build on those. I've rented equipment before for really cheap, really great microphones. I've done a lot of different things. So if you have any questions, please let me know. You can hit me up on links in the show notes and you can support the podcast through Patreon if you want, speakupforblue.com forward slash Patreon, but get to it. Get to doing science communication.

16:20 I want to hear what's holding you back. If you want to do any type of science communication on any of these platforms, what is holding you back tomorrow? I'm going to talk about the benefits, one of the benefits that I've been able to have and a big announcement tomorrow and tomorrow's episode. And then of course, Wednesday we have Amy Weldon, who's on the podcast talking about her podcast, Blue Collar White Coat and the release of her second season. That's on the episode coming up this week. And we're going to talk about YouTube and live training on Thursday. Hit that follow button if you want. Don't want to miss any of the episodes. I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.