How To Listen To Podcasts

The Discoverability Triangle (freehand)

This post could change your life! Ok a bit of a big claim but it could change your listening, so read on for a great list of gardening podcasts and programmes.

I listen to far too many podcasts about podcasting. I have also joined various podcasting groups, some in Facebook, some on Zoom calls. I hope fellow podcasters won’t mind me addressing the elephant in the room: how many people are actually listening? Now, in one sense that doesn’t matter. If you are passionate about your subject, you don’t really mind if you are sharing that passion with 3, 300 or 3000 people.

However, one piece of advice that has really hit home for me recently is the Discoverability Triangle, the intellectual property of podcaster Mark Asquith. Mark reminds me:

1. Your potential ideal listener may not even know that podcasting exists.

2. Your potential ideal listener may love podcasts but has never heard of you.

3. You aren’t creating content that matters enough to your ideal listener for them to tell anyone else about it, even though you think you are.

Why am I sharing this here? Well those of you reading this are already supporting Our Plant Stories just by being here and all of us probably know gardeners in both groups 1 and 2. Therefore these blog posts are to share with those other gardeners. This week I wanted to write something for the group that we think would like the stories but don’t know about podcasting.

WAIT WHAT’S A PODCAST?

If you are feeling like everyone talks about podcasts (and there are lots of good ones) and you want to listen too, then this is a quick guide.

There is a lot on the web about when podcasts began and who started them and why they are called podcasts and it’s hard to encapsulate this complex story into a sentence. So, if you want to know more, this is one of the best and most up to date articles I have found.

You may well have heard this phrase: ‘listen wherever you get your podcasts’. The good news is if you have subscribed to this website (totally free) you don’t need to worry about where to find the Our Plant Stories podcast. It will be delivered to your email every Sunday. You’ll then be able to listen to it, whenever you want.

A note about the word ‘subscribe’. I personally think it is confusing. ‘Subscribe’ makes you think you will need to pay and certainly some podcast makers are putting some of their bonus content or ad free versions of their podcast behind a subscription wall. So the language is changing and the word ‘follow’ is becoming more used. But most of the podcast content out there is FREE. All of the Our Plant Stories content is FREE.

But back to the podcasts - where do you want to listen? I loved my portable radio as a child and I literally carried it from room to room so I could listen wherever I was. If you want to do the same with podcasts, so you can listen when you are in the garden, or in the car, or going for a walk, then you will want to listen using your phone, whether its an iPhone or Android.

The iPhone app for podcasts, is simply called Podcasts, it is a purple icon with a microphone and lives on your iPhone's Home screen. If you can't find it, swipe down from the top of the screen and search for it using Spotlight.

If you have an android phone, look for or download the Google podcast app, it’s the diamond shape made up of blue, red, yellow and green lines.

There are other apps - you might have Spotify on your phone, for example, and already use it to listen to music. You can of course also listen on your computer. Just click here: Google Podcasts. Once you open the podcast app on your phone or computer, there are several ways to search. You could just type the name of the podcast you want, into the search app. If you want to look for gardening podcasts in general and there are many, the ‘category’ you want is ‘Leisure’.

And that is pretty much all there is to it. As discussed above, although you are often asked to ‘subscribe’, podcasts are increasingly asking people to ‘follow’. Whatever word they use, all it means, is that every time the podcast issues a new episode you will be alerted to it in your podcast app’s library. It’s good for the podcaster because it means you won’t forget them or miss an episode. You can then chose to download the episode or choose for it to be downloaded automatically. Downloading it just means you will be able to play it ‘offline’, so on your walk or commute. And once you have listened, you can delete it. You could think of episodes as library books. You pile them up on the bedside table (on your app) waiting to be read and when you’ve read them (listened to them), you clear them (delete them) off the bedside table (off your phone) and back to the library (into the ether).

The podcaster may ask you to rate or review them. You scroll down on the podcast page and see a Ratings and Reviews section where you can select a number of stars and if you want, write a review. It’s helpful to the podcaster because let’s be honest there are thousands of podcasts. Anything that can persuade others to spend some of their precious time listening to this particular podcast will be helpful to the person who has made it.

I hope this will be a very inclusive community. If you already listen to podcasts, then I’d love for you to add some recommendations in the comments this week so that those who are just starting out on the podcasting journey have some signs to follow that will lead them to good content. I am going to start by linking to a list I came across on Instagram by Owen the Gardener, an avid radio and podcast listener. I love this list of his 12 best gardening podcasts and I am sure there will be something for everyone.

Next week I’m going to address the potential ideal listener who has heard of podcasts but doesn’t know anything about Our Plant Stories. There will be many clips to explain what the podcast is all about.

Have a good week and let me know if this blog post has started you on the podcast listening journey.