Curiosity in Rising's Contextual Check-In

BCM206 - Contextual Report

This semester, I’m releasing new episodes for my Digital Artefact, Curiosity in Rising, a podcast series which focuses on lifestyle and spirituality topics. My project aims to educate and inspire, through 20-40 minute episodes. In this blog post, I’ll summarise the recent weeks of work on my artefact and reflect on learning moments, also touching on the notion of online tribes, for Curiosity in Rising’s (CiR) social utility. 

The first episode of the semester features fellow BCM student Kai Ahern. We discussed music marketing and pop culture. Kai, a self-certified live music expert, and I study marketing together, and after a (northern hemisphere) summer filled with big pop music moments, we had a fun, inspired chat which blended both our interests and Uni majors together! Before dropping this episode, I wanted to drum up some engagement and anticipation via Curiosity in Rising’s Instagram page, due to me taking an unexplained four month hiatus from podcasting. I didn’t want to just come straight back to shoving promotional posts in my follower’s face - one of the key successes of CiR has been the forward facing persona that I’ve attached to the podcast.

Thus, I came back to posting on the page for the first time in months with some more simple posts like photo dumps, inspiration graphic quotes and a reel which reminded followers of an episode from earlier in the year. As expected, the photo dump garnered the most likes, this communicates that aesthetic and personal posts are always going to be my audience’s preference and was a great learning experience. 

When it came time to promote new podcast episodes, my strategy remained similar to what I had been doing in 2023. Dropping links in relevant subreddit communities and posting 2-3 promotional posts on Instagram. For the upcoming episodes I am also considering using Tiktok to promote, due to its incredible For You page algorithm, but I frankly dread this due to negative experiences with Tiktok in the past - finicky and confusing editing system, strict guidelines and censorship, strong sense of memetic warfare, whereby ‘digital battlefields’ can erupt. 

Podcast Analytics on September 15, 2024

There is however a certain beauty to experimenting with different online tribes and their responses to your media, this has always been relevant to CiR, as its diverse topics attract interest from various online communities, but they may not continue listening to other episodes. For example, I promoted the latest episode in a music promotion Reddit group, which often discusses pop culture. While members might listen to the Music Marketing & Pop Culture episode, they’re unlikely to tune into future episodes with different themes. Thus, promoting to online tribes is an ever evolving practice and not sustainable. 

I’ve learned that taking hiatuses isn’t ideal—a podcast needs momentum, and comebacks are tough. Using trending, relevant hashtags has helped maintain “non-follower” engagement on Instagram, though I’ve noticed hashtags are less effective now compared to when I started this DA in 2022. A new episode drops in a few days, with two more coming later this semester. Through this DA, I’m learning to navigate digital platforms and enhance my podcast’s social utility by growing reach and connecting with its ideal listeners by offering an inspiring space to chill and learn something new! 

REFERENCES: 

Davies, J., 2013. Nomads and tribes: Online meaning-making and the development of new literacies. In Popular literacies, childhood and schooling (pp. 160-173). Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203015551-12/nomads-tribes-julia-davies  

Adams, T.L. and Smith, S.A. eds., 2008. Electronic tribes: The virtual worlds of geeks, gamers, shamans, and scammers. University of Texas Press.  

Wall, T & Mitew, T 2018, ‘Swarm networks and the design process of a distributed meme warfare campaign’, First Monday, vol. 23, no. 5.

Lindgren, M., 2016. Personal narrative journalism and podcasting. The Radio Journal–International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, 14(1), pp.23-41.