In any given week, more than a quarter of Americans listen to a podcast; 41% over the period of a month, according to Pew Research. Podcasts with creative content and engaging guests can be an invaluable component of a successful thought leadership and audience engagement strategy. However, starting and maintaining a good podcast can be a lot to handle in-house, and many clients are, understandably, hesitant to commit to the regular cadence.
In 2021, Stride, Inc launched “What I Want to Know" — a podcast hosted by the company's president, Kevin P. Chavous — to help establish Stride, already the largest online educator in the U.S., as a leading voice on K-12 education issues. The show balanced the host’s personality and style with a compelling line-up of guests, and after a year of production, it reached half a million downloads. Stride knew they needed to take the show to the next level to leverage the platform they had built. They wanted to up the ante in terms of production value, content, research, and creativity to reach bigger, broader audiences — all without losing what drove the show's initial success.
Pinkston’s integrated team addressed all the client’s needs under one roof, reducing administrative burden while strengthening the show's production and allowing Kevin to shine. Because we believe the best communication — even podcast development — is rooted in good research, our research team and writers manage episode ideation, guest identification, question development and the host’s scripts.
The production team uses Pinkston’s fully equipped video studio to shoot and produce a high quality video-first product, editing and cutting in-house. The creative team refreshed the show logo and designed new still and moving graphics that could support expanded social media activities. Finally, Pinkston’s digital marketing team is launching new podcast-specific social media channels, setting a foundation for both organic and paid social media activities to expand the reach of the podcast to new audiences. These lanes of effort create not only a valuable asset for the Stride brand, but an informative resource for education industry professionals everywhere. Check out the trailer for Season Three of the “What I Want to Know” podcast.
