Podcasting for organisations: is it worth it and how to start

Many communications teams are asked whether they should start a podcast. The honest answer is that a podcast is a niche channel. The Reuters Institute's Digital News Report 2026 found that use of news podcasts was unchanged at 11% globally, while 77% of people watch online news video each week.¹ If your goal is to reach the general public quickly, short video and other channels will usually do more.

Where a podcast earns its place is depth. Listeners choose to spend 20 or 40 minutes with your guests, often while commuting or working. That makes it a good fit for specialist audiences: practitioners in a sector, policymakers, partners, researchers and your own staff. An NGO podcast that explains how a programme works, in the voices of the people running it, can do things a two-minute film cannot.

Before buying a microphone, write one page that answers a few plain questions. If you cannot answer them clearly, a podcast is probably not the right tool yet, and a series of articles, a photo story or short films may serve your audience better. The answers also become the brief for your host and producer.

• Who exactly is it for, and what will they get from it that they cannot get elsewhere?
• What will change if they listen: a decision, a practice, an understanding?
• Who will host it, and can they commit to a full season?
• How many episodes can you produce well with the time and people you have?
• In which language or languages will it be recorded?
• How will people find it: newsletter, website, social media, partners?

Apple Podcasts asks every show to choose a type, and the choice is a useful planning tool. Episodic shows can be heard in any order, and suit guest interviews, news roundups and conversations between hosts. Serial shows are designed to be heard in sequence, from the first episode to the last, and suit multi-part storytelling such as documentaries and investigative reporting.²

For most organisations, a short episodic season of interviews is the easiest way to start. A serial documentary series takes more research, scripting and editing, but it can tell the story of a programme or a place with real depth. In our own practice, we suggest planning a first season of a fixed length, such as six or eight episodes, then reviewing before committing to more.

A trailer is often the first thing a new listener hears. Apple advises keeping trailers to two minutes or less and using them to introduce the show and its hosts, describe the subject briefly and include the moments that define what listening will be like.³ It suggests ending with curiosity, such as an unresolved question, and giving the audience a clear next step.³

Recording the trailer early has another benefit. It forces the team to say, in two minutes, what the show is and why it matters. If that is hard to do, the idea needs more work before you record a full season.

Listeners forgive simple production but not poor sound. Record in a quiet room with soft furnishings, away from traffic, generators and air conditioning, and give each speaker their own microphone where possible. Record a backup if you can, and listen back to a test recording before the real interview starts.

When you publish, technical standards matter. Apple asks for loudness of about -16 LKFS, with a tolerance of plus or minus 1 dB, and true peaks no higher than -1 dBFS, measured using ITU-R BS.1770.⁴ For RSS feeds it strongly recommends AAC rather than MP3, and gives bit rates for mono and stereo files.⁴ A spoken-word show with one or two voices rarely needs stereo, and mono keeps files small for listeners on mobile data.

The Reuters Institute notes that podcasts are increasingly video-first.⁵ Filming a conversation with two or three cameras gives you a version for YouTube and short clips for social media, while the audio still goes to podcast apps. It also adds work: lighting, framing and a set that looks good on camera.

If you are unsure, record audio to a high standard and film only the opening season with a simple setup. You can then see whether the video clips, the full video episodes or the audio feed bring the most attention from the audience you care about.

A podcast with no transcript shuts out people who are Deaf or hard of hearing and those who have difficulty processing audio. The W3C says transcripts of prerecorded audio are required at WCAG Level A, and should include the speech and the non-speech sounds needed to understand the content.⁶ Adding headings and links to a transcript also helps with search engine optimisation.⁶

Apple Podcasts now generates transcripts automatically, and creators can supply their own as VTT or SRT files.⁷ However, it supports only eleven languages, and Kinyarwanda and Swahili are not among them. For unsupported languages, Apple suggests linking to a transcript in the episode show notes.⁷ For a Rwandan audience, publish a checked transcript on your own website for every episode, in the language of the recording.

• A one-page plan: audience, purpose, host, languages
• Episodic or serial format chosen
• A first season of fixed length, planned in advance
• A trailer of two minutes or less
• Quiet recording space and one microphone per speaker
• Audio mastered to about -16 LKFS, true peak below -1 dBFS
• A checked transcript published with every episode
• A review after the first season before committing to more