How Important is Authenticity to Your Corporate Podcast?

How Important is Authenticity to Your Corporate Podcast?

How do listeners respond to scripted shows versus improvised ones? Does sounding “polished” lead to more listener engagement, or less? Should show hosts talk about their personal lives during interviews? 

These were questions I sought to investigate in my recent dissertation, “Authenticity Attracts: Measuring Authentic Talk in Podcasts Against Online Community Engagement.” As a media and communication scholar, I have always been interested in mass rhetoric — specifically, how, why, and through what means language is used to influence human behavior across large populations. Studying podcasts has been a fascinating expedition within this overall field of research. 

For corporate podcasts, specifically, understanding how the perceived “authenticity” of a podcast impacts its performance in the marketplace is helpful for planning out the format of a show. Does it really matter if you’re reading off a script? Is it better for you to pause between interview questions rather than talk over the interviewees? Should you bring up personal information so that your listeners know you’re “real,” even if it had nothing to do with the episode topic? 

The answer, based on my research, is yes: authenticity matters, and more importantly: authenticity creates more engaged audiences and drives up affinity. 

Here’s how I know: 

To conduct the study, I reviewed 41 of Apple’s Top 100 podcasts at the time (I was hoping to review all 100, but time was limited) and created an algorithm to determine the level of authenticity in each podcast. “Authenticity” in each podcast was determined through its authenticity score. This metric was operationalized as a product of 17 factors grouped into three dominant clusters: speech authenticity, personal authenticity, and interactive authenticity. Each of these factors was selected based on a deep literature review of research in discourse analysis, conversation analysis, broadcast studies, linguistics, and social sciences:

• Speech authenticity: filler words, hesitations, false starts, etc. — things that indicated the talk was spontaneous and not scripted. 

• Personal authenticity: expressions of feeling and emotions, personal anecdotes, confessions — things that indicated genuine self-disclosure, humanity and vulnerability. 

• Interactive authenticity: (in the case of two or more speakers) interruptions, interjections, impromptu jokes, etc. — things that indicated free-flowing conversation rather than structured interviews and performative dialogues. 

Then, I measured each podcast’s authenticity score against its community size (number of followers/fans on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Patreon), community engagement (average number of interactions per post), and affinity (Apple Podcasts rating and number of reviews). 

The end result was a series of linear regressions meant to predict podcast “popularity.” Does authentic talk in podcasts really impact the size and engagement of their audiences? Here were the three statistically significant findings and takeaways, in laymen’s terms:

1. Podcasts with higher authenticity scores, on average, earned higher Apple Podcasts ratings.

People like to give a thumbs up to podcasts in which the speakers appear to be unscripted and personal. This was hypothesized, so it was satisfying to have the data to back it up. People like authenticity, regardless of genre, speaker, or topic.

2. Podcasts with higher authenticity scores, on average, had smaller communities.

Podcasts with “authentic talk” cater to niche audiences. News shows like The Daily have hundreds of thousands of followers because they’re impersonal and, therefore, broad (The Daily had a low authenticity score). But shows like Reply All (high authenticity score) have niche, in this case, tech-focused audiences, that tend to be smaller, but more invested. We can extrapolate that being free from the regulations and rigidity needed to appeal to a wide audience fosters an environment where authenticity can flourish.

3. Podcasts with higher authenticity scores, on average, had higher engagement rates on social.

Podcasts that were more “authentic” had more interactions from followers on their social media posts. Their communities were more active and engaged — despite being smaller communities on average.

So what can we take away from this? Well, first, I have to add in a short note about research limitations and restrictions. This was a tiny sample and only looked at the most popular shows — it’s definitely not representative of the 1.5 million podcasts active today. And though it was based on theory, my calculation of the authenticity scores was still wrought with my own bias of what constitutes authenticity. And where were the control groups and cross-comparisons with other forms of media?

But if we look at these findings superficially, they reveal that podcasts demonstrate the public desire for more authentic conversations in popular media.

As podcast producers, it’s important to know that removing the traditional stigma of formal host-audience relationships and embracing unfiltered speech, vulnerability and self-disclosure not only drives up affinity within your audience but catalyzes their increased interaction on social media, too.

At a time when many are still seeking comfort, being able to create or be a part of a community built around authenticity is powerfully encouraging. 

This post was adapted from Medium.com. Read the original here.