Deepening Audience relationships“Working with VoxPop has deepened our relationship with the people who matter most – our listeners. Whether they are hearing the show live, on-demand or on a device – folks are one tap away from leaving us a message in studio quality. It has made a huge difference to the sound of the program, an on air reminder that we are ready to meet our audience wherever they are and whenever they choose. We could not be happier with the app and our work with its development team. From a production point of view, the VoxPop app gives producers an easy interface that saves time and makes call selection a doddle. The app is popular, fun to use and has quickly established itself as a key tool in driving deep audience engagement.” - Rupert Allman 1A WAMU. Founder & Executive Producer. 1A notes the VoxPop recordings sound much clearer than a phone call, and sending them takes less time than dialing their number and leaving a voicemail. Producers save time reviewing contributions by scrolling through voice-text transcripts.
The audio renaissance.
Spoken Word’s share of audio listening has increased by 40% over the past seven years and 8% this year, according to NPR/Edison’s The Spoken Word Audio Report for 2021. It is driven by large increases in young and multicultural audiences. Podcast listening hit an all-time high.
The share of time listening to spoken word audio on a mobile device has increased by 278% over the past seven years. Podcast listening is a major factor, the report found. The 2021 report "Where Are The Audiences?" by the New Zealand public media funder, NZ on Air, revealed subscription video on demand (SVOD) and podcasts are the only media to have grown their daily audiences in the past year.
But not only are people listening more in new ways, we know through VoxPop they want to engage using speech. We know this because one of our foundation platforms, 1A VoxPop, has just passed its third anniversary and audience engagement is as strong as ever.
When I dreamed up the idea for VoxPop in 2017, that was my first question. Would audiences engage via a speech-driven platform and would that community be sustainable?
The likes of 1A VoxPop and SciFri VoxPop show audiences don’t just want to listen, they want to speak as well. They want to be part of the show. Even with just our single-purpose, minimum viable product, sustainable digital communities developed around these brands.
So, our focus for the past year has been on improving the user experience and introducing more things to do in the apps, such as a content wire, listening to podcasts or live radio listening, to enhance the user experience and increase engagement times. You can see more how our clients have been using VoxPop platforms below.
The VoxPop platform made significant advances despite the ongoing pandemic and all the difficulties it presents. In one instance, it has proven a solution for broadcasting in a pandemic.
If you'd like to know more, please do get in touch.
Peter Fowler
VoxPop co-founder
How VoxPop clients are using our platforms.
A safe digital space for farmersNew Zealand farmers, like those worldwide, are under intense scrutiny as part of global efforts to curb climate change. NZ farming advocacy group, Federated Farmers, knows farmers themselves need to lead this debate. Farmers need to share the hurdles, the frustrations, so they can be overcome by exploring solutions. However, discussing this on open social media platforms attracts trolls and bots and is generally bad for farmers’ mental health. Listening and talking is ideal for farmers, so we built FedsVoice, an audio-driven social media platform, enabling speech-text discussions in a safe and nurturing environment, with information they can trust. It also includes news and podcasts produced by Federated Farmers.
Direct line to the production teamScience Friday is a weekly call-in radio show that broadcasts each Friday in the U.S. on nearly 400 public radio stations and via podcast hosted by award-winning science journalist Ira Flatow. Covering the outer reaches of space to the tiniest microbes in our bodies, Science Friday is the source for entertaining and educational news about science, tech, and other cool stuff. SciFri VoxPop provides a direct line to the production team, and lets the audience contribute their voice to upcoming stories. For example, how is your county, city, or neighborhood responding to climate change? Your comments or questions might be featured on the national radio broadcast and podcast.
Podcast engagementWe are delighted to be working with White House correspondent, Presidential Historian and USA Today columnist, Paul Brandus, to develop an engagement platform specifically for podcasts, with the recent launch of West Wing Reports VoxPop. The VoxPop platform is a companion to his new Evergreen political and business podcast, West Wing Reports, and he is keen to engage audiences and newsmakers in his own branded audio environment, to gather material for the show. Paul is a seasoned media entrepreneur and we are excited about what might evolve in this collaboration.
Community Conversations Talofa, mālō e lelei, kia orāna! In New Zealand, South Waikato Impact Hub was looking for a way to encourage digital conversations among local Pacific communities in their native languages (Samoan, Cook Island Maori, Tongan), so we built a speech driven engagement and publishing platform for them: "Pakeka - Pacific Community Conversations" as part of our community service objectives. Pakeka means “potato” in Samoan. Pakeka is due to launch in early 2022.
Pandemic ResponseIn February 2020, New Zealand made a decision to “go hard, go early” to eliminate community spread of Covid-19. You will be aware radio studios are a superspreader location for germs, so 15 community radio stations (CAMA) across NZ were closed and unable to produce shows. Their funder, NZ on Air, asked us to produce a remote recording and filing platform for up to 15 stations in one app. We delivered in a month, and they started making shows from home through our pandemic product, VoxPop Studio. It worked so well, they now use it as a regular daily recording tool. Phil Grey from CAMA made a video on how to get the best out of recording with VoxPop in a pandemic, get in touch with us for the link. Thanks to NZ on Air.
Live Streaming PlatformTe Akau ki Papamoa School is a primary (elementary) school with a localised radio station which it uses as a platform to teach Te Reo Māori (indigenous Maori language) across the school. They digitized but are using an app which only works if listeners are using the school wifi. There’s a narrow reach. They approached us and as part of our community service mission we are building them a digital radio station, where they can live broadcast lessons through desktop/mobile and the audience can listen/participate. This is still under development, but we have a working demonstration of the minimum functionality such as list of classrooms/lessons, differentiation of rights: broadcaster, admin, listener. We hope to have it up and running by the start of the school year in February 2022.
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