Lydia Bright, famous from The Only Way is Essex is the podcast for people who didn’t know about podcasts! She said the podcast form seemed less invasive than TV to bring the whole family into the podcast. So she started a podcast with her whole family called ‘The Brights’.
This is a huge production as there are microphones placed all around her family home. Promotion for the podcast was done like a TV show with press junkets and daytime TV slots. Young people were introduced to podcasts through this podcast, due to the profile Lydia already has on social.
Lydia’s media presence and social media presence has influenced how she promotes the podcast. She had to learn what worked, pictures and short sound clips were the standard but actually the behind the scenes Instagram stories and Instagram live with swipe links direct to the podcast have really worked.
Lydia has 1.3m followers on Twitter. She doesn’t promote on here at the moment as Instagram is better to attract younger audiences and you need to keep an eye on the up and coming social media platforms.
IGTV is the new thing on Instagram – longer extended videos. Lydia gets 20k views on a normal Instagram but on IGTV, because it’s being pushed so much by Instagram, you get 22k, so more. She also noted that you need to think about what the algorithm is doing on a particular day but social media is a full time job.
The majority of recording is done on Sunday to fit around the family. The scenes are scripted but relevant to the life of the family. Some parts are recorded with voice notes during the week and along with everything recorded on Sunday it’s threaded together with a voice over from Lydia. It’s a truly innovative show and highly produced as TV quality.
Lydia’s advice for young audiences – ‘social media is massive, it’s the way to tap into a younger market. Rely on other people to put the word out for you’. Instagram is the place to find young people.
Lydia loves – Katie Piper & Fearne Cotton podcasts! Podcasts over TV, Instagram over Snapchat (but the filters are better on Snapchat ;)
Stay relatable, be fun, talk about real life situation, entertain but give back…