Anyone who is anyone has a podcast these days, the low entry level of a basic microphone and computer makes it easy for you to share your passion with the world in audio form.

With so many new podcasts to choose from, you're more likely to find one that you love but that does mean that their will be a lot of new bad podcasts out there. We thought we'd share some of our opinions of how the podcast ecosystem could be improved. Let us know your thoughts with us on social media.

‍Better Discoverability

We're finding it harder to discover new shows with the top ten charts remaining largely unchanged week to week. The addiction of YouTube comes from their algorithm suggesting videos from growing creators that I didn't even know I wanted to watch. The recommendations from Apple Podcasts & Spotify are good but as we currently have a lot more time on our hands, you find yourself looking through the same few recommended shows that appear to be human curated. An algorithm similar to YouTube would allow you to discover new shows constantly.

Make listeners pay for them

This might be an unpopular opinion but making listeners pay a small fee might help to increase the quality of the shows. We're increasingly becoming used to having to pay for our content after expecting it to be free for so long and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Paying for your favourite shows will increase loyalty to a podcast, much like that gym membership you were paying for. A small fee each month will also allow your favourite podcasters to invest into creating a better show, being able to pay for better guests and building better settings for them to take place in.

Episode Thumbnails

This is another feature we'd like to see taken from YouTube. When you scroll through the charts and you come across two or three episodes of the same podcast in the charts with the same image, this can create a familiarity that makes it easy to swipe past. If it had an individual episode thumbnail then it would be a lot more engaging. It would also be better for listeners to help them better understand what each episode is about.

Audio Previews

Like most in lockdown, we've become fitness experts and have been using Apple's new Fitness+ and one of our favourite features is their workout previews so that we don't have to commit to a workout to then give up five minutes later because it isn't quite right. A short 30-60 second preview of an episode would help entice the listener into listening to the full episode. It can sometimes be tricky to understand properly what the episode will be like, especially without thumbnails as well.

Increase video content

Creating short video clips of your podcast episodes are a great way to promote your podcast on other platforms to a larger audience. We spoke last week about diversifying your content (check out the article below!) and this is a great way of doing that, with videos optimised for the platform they are on. As we mentioned, it can be hard for smaller podcasters to be discovered on the major podcast platforms but with the algorithm on the major social networks or by using paid ads, you can improve the chances of being heard.

We're constantly searching for a great podcast, share some of your favourites with Social Bull Media on our socials and get in touch with us if you want to build your own podcast.