What comes to mind when you hear the words “company podcast”? Likely a stuffy corporate executive interviewing thought-leaders, visionaries, and SMEs (translation: subject matter experts). Likely a long, rambling, unedited and unfocused conversation. And likely… boring.

Zendesk, one of the world’s leading customer service software companies, is trying to change all that. They’ve just launched an original podcast series focused on relationships.

There are no corporate executives.

There are no thought leaders or SMEs.

And NONE of the content is about Zendesk or customer service.

Instead, there are powerful, emotional first-person stories about relationships.

Monica Norton is the Senior Director of Content Marketing. We asked her to take us inside Zendesk’s unique podcast strategy.

Zendesk already publishes an online magazine and curates a live event series about relationships. Now you’re launching a podcast about relationships. How come?

I have been asked multiple times in my four years at Zendesk, “why don’t we do a podcast?” I have been very resistant to the idea because our content philosophy at Zendesk is quality over quantity.

I was very hesitant to enter the fray of the typical B2B “let’s get two people in a conference room with kind of bad audio quality and interview and talk about technology and our product and boring stuff that no one really cares about.”

So people have suggested it many times and I always would come back to them and say:

“Okay — you come to me with a concept for something that’s a little different, something that’s a little more interesting, something that has sustainability. I don’t want to do this for four weeks and then abandon it. I want to do it well. I want the audio quality to be good. I don’t want it recorded in a conference room. I don’t want it to be over Skype. It needs to live up to our brand promise at Zendesk which is: we do things elegantly. We do things in a sophisticated way.”

Frankly, we didn’t want it to be janky.

In the meantime, people like Slack started doing really cool, interesting podcasts that were more storytelling style, that weren’t stereotypical “get two talking heads in a room together talking to themselves.”

This is definitely not an unedited conversation between an executive and an industry thought-leader — it’s not a traditional company podcast at all. How come?

It’s definitely a storytelling podcast. I think the real value in using stories to illustrate a larger point is an important one. On the Relate website, the point of the stories is to help you learn something, to give you ideas and suggestions about how to improve your relationships. We do that very specifically in the stories.

What we do on the Relate podcast that’s different is we don’t get that prescriptive. It’s not a self-help podcast. We’re not going to give you “10 ways to improve your relationships at work.”

What we’re going to do is tell you stories about relationships that illustrate those points.

The power of stories is they are more memorable, they are more sticky than any kind of prescriptive advice that you get. When you hear someone else’s story and some else’s experience and have them explain to you what they learned from that experience, that’s a lot more memorable and it’s easier to internalize and apply in your own life. That’s the real power and the value of the storytelling style that we’re doing with the Relate podcast.

I always say that it’s like fables, right? It’s much more impactful to hear a story about the tortoise and the hare than it is to have someone say, “Slow and steady wins the race.” It’s much more memorable.

We want to create these really memorable lessons about relationships that other people have learned and have you be entertained and interested and also learn something.

Why did you choose podcasting as the medium to feature stories and emotions instead of direct advice from experts?

Podcasting is such a personal medium. These days we listen to these audio stories and podcasts with our headphones in. It’s like someone’s talking directly to you. It’s a very personal, one-to-one medium. It lends itself naturally to these kinds of personal stories, just because of the nature of audio.

I listen to podcasts on my commute, and I might be surround by a hundred people in a BART train, but I feel very protected in this little bubble listening to the Relate podcast or This American Life or The Moth, and, you know, I feel a very close connection to those people who are talking in my ear and telling me this very personal story about themselves and their life. It just feels like a very kind of open, receptive way to get those stories and absorb that and think about what that means for me and what I can take from that.

It feels like your strategy is to focus first and foremost on creating value for the audience.

You have to have great content and give them a reason to stick around.

We can’t tie people to their chairs and make them keep their earphones in and listen to our whole podcast. It has to be good or they’re not going to stick around. No one is obligated to read, watch, or listen to your content and people forget that.

You need to make it personal, you need to make it interesting, you need to make it relevant, you need to make it even fun and entertaining. People have to WANT to read it or listen to it.

They’re busy people. You have to respect their time and provide them with something that doesn’t only benefit you, that benefits them. It has a clear and obvious benefit to them.

The truth is these days people have a lot of choices and they don’t have a lot of time, so I think the brands that are investing in providing a useful service to their audience and providing useful, helpful and interesting content are the ones who are going to win.

We certainly believe that, which is why we’re investing so heavily in Relate.

Want to hear for yourself how Zendesk has rethought a company podcast? Subscribe to the Relate podcast in your podcasting apps:

iTunes

Stitcher

Spotify

RSS

Google Play

Overcast

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