Arkansas’ Podcast Boom: Business Takes Center Stage

Ti King, Karen Tricot Steward and Brittany Rush, founders of the nonprofit Arkansas Podcast Collaborative (Steve Lewis)

Arkansas podcasting is coming of age, and it means business.

The nonprofit Arkansas Podcast Collaborative lists 170 podcasts originating in Arkansas; 32 have business topics.

Faith, the Razorbacks, travel and health are all popular topics, but in terms of numbers of individual shows, nothing tops business, commerce and technology.

“While we don’t know about every podcast being produced in Arkansas, we do scout, and every time we come across one we add it to our database,” said Ti King, a podcaster and digital marketing professional who leads the collaborative. “There’s also a forum on our website for people to sign up and add their podcast to the list.”

Business and faith are the top subjects, followed by sports. “I would say faith has so many spots because churches are recording their sermons and releasing them as podcasts.”

Today’s businesses are creating their own podcasts to engage with potential clients, build a steady stream of content to be broken down into social media promotions, and position their executives as thought leaders in industry specialties.

Incentives for business owners involve a return on investment, King said. “With podcasting, that return might be awareness, education, monetizing your channel, or just getting new clients or customers,” King said. “A commercial can only tell you quickly what a service does. With podcasting, you’re giving listeners valuable information, starting a conversation that makes it easy for new customers or clients to feel better about hiring your services.”

King started his first podcast as a networking tool, to get into conversations with people he wanted to learn from. “People are flattered to be asked to be guests, and you get a personal master class with that person, and you get to share it.”

‘We’ve Got a Business’

Cody Johnston, a Lonoke podcasting consultant, started Reckless Media with his wife, Elaine, in 2018.

“We were already doing a podcast called ‘Reckless Pursuit,’ and I had worked with nonprofits, primarily helping churches get podcasts off the ground,” Johnston said. “Elaine had experience as a copywriter, and a friend asked for help in writing show notes,” brief summaries of episodes.

Another friend wanted editing help, one of Cody Johnston’s specialties after a career in performing, audio engineering and videography. “All of that kind of stuff is native to me,” he said. “Music production, editing, audio. Elaine and I just looked at each other and said, ‘We’ve got a business on our hands.’”

The Johnstons have a studio in Lonoke where podcasters can come in alone or with guests and record.

“It’s pretty straightforward,” he said. “We have a microphone setup, the camera and the green screen, and we can customize it for their needs. It’s basically plug and play.”

Reckless Media also has remote equipment to meet clients and produce podcasts at their businesses. “People will also send in stuff, and I have a mastering studio here on my property to finish the production.”

Costs can run from a few hundred dollars for studio time to far more for a spectrum of services, said King, who runs Arkansas Podcast Studio in Little Rock with Podcast Collaboration co-founders Karen Tricot Steward and Brittany Rush. Steward hosts a new podcast focused on the justice system, called “Burden.”

The nonprofit collaborative charges a $200 yearly membership fee to cover setup and $250 per episode. The cost is tax-deductible for members, King said.

‘No Definitive Model’

“For podcast studios, there is no definitive model and everyone is trying something different,” King said. “Podcast Videos just moved into a new location in Rogers and their setup is permanent with a large table and up to six microphones on the table. Customers pay for their time by the hour and we have an engineer there who can help assist, but it’s pretty much a turnkey operation.

“Other studios like ours require that you pay by the hour, but we also factor in engineering, coaching, editing, distribution, etc. … Every studio starts with an hourly rental, but people are going to need assistance, so each of those services is additional.”

Podcasts aren’t just audio anymore. With YouTube becoming a major platform, video is critical, the Johnstons, King and Steward said.

Listeners still hear most of their podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, “but the main way people are discovering podcasts is through YouTube shorts, videos that are less than 60 seconds,” King said. “You put it out there and you can have thousands and thousands of views, even if you’ve never posted before.

“And the Google Podcast app is going away, and they’re replacing it with what’s called YouTube Music,” King continued. “To get your podcast on there you have to have a YouTube channel.”

About three years ago, Steward noticed the YouTube shift and faced something of an identity crisis.

Steward owns Power of Pod, a Little Rock production company. But she also worked for NPR station KUAR in Little Rock for years as a reporter, anchor and content development director.

“Because YouTube is now the No. 1 search engine for podcasts, if you’re not on YouTube, you’re going to hurt your podcast,” she said. “Personally, I was a radio reporter who came in thinking this is going to be great, I’ll do the same thing, that immersive-sound public radio thing. But you really do need to know about video these days.”

For the vast majority of podcasters, the work doesn’t pay the bills. But episodes can be  valuable  business tools.

Cody Johnston said front-facing businesses can reap many hours  of content about their enterprises by podcasting, and much of it can be relevant for years. A local bank can distinguish itself from a national chain; a clinic can establish itself as a trustworthy source of care.

“You build a cumulative database of your corporate voice,” Johnston said. “Those databases can be chopped up for social media, used for blog posts, for advertising on Google or Meta, and they can keep your presence high on social media.”

And he agreed with King that podcasters who invite guests build up goodwill. He recalled a friend in financial planning whose podcast widened his network. “He reached out to small businesses to say he had a podcast and wanted to feature them,” Johnston said. “At the time, he wasn’t pitching his services to them. But if just 1 out of 10 of his guests remember him when they need financial planning help, that’s 10 or 15 new clients for him.”

Arkansas Podcasts

(Source: The Arkansas Podcast Collaborative)