Martin Keen pictured above
What would one million subscribers do for your brand? I asked Martin Keen, host of the IBM Technology YouTube channel how he and his team achieved this milestone and what kind of content is most likely to scale your brand presence. The secret is to take an audience focus vs brand focus.
🎧 Listen to my discussion with Martin Keen »
Listeners subscribe to podcasts that focus on THEM
IBM has multiple YouTube channels and content streams, but IBM Technology grew at a much faster pace than the rest. Why? Keen says it’s the result of his team’s focus on audience. They have been given the freedom to obsess over what their audience obsesses over, free from pushing product or services.
“With the IBM technology channel, we took the approach that we would actively not mention our company’s products at all. The policy is, ‘don’t talk about the IBM offering,’” Keen told me. “That was a big departure from basically anything we’ve been doing in the company at all,” said Keen. “We tried to take the approach on the  IBM technology channel of just talking about things generically, agnostically, and that’s been the thing that I think has really found such a good audience.”
This audience focus makes a big difference, but traditional marketing teams struggle with it.
Where corporate podcasts fail: they’re long ads.
Most corporate podcasts fail because they’re just long form advertisements. Bad corporate podcasts like this will expand into their services, their people, or the nuance of their product offerings. That’s boring. No one listens to this stuff. Even executives who oversee these projects will admit they don’t seek out advertorial content themselves, but for some reason don’t apply the same thinking to their own content.
A podcast only grows when it offers value to your audience—value that doesn’t involve you. What does that look like?
How to take an audience focus
Grow a podcast with audience focus is straight forward, it just takes work. Get to know your audience, and create a show that utilizes your expertise to fulfill their needs, questions, struggles, or engages their sense of curiosity.
In the case of IBM Technology, Keen discusses AI and LLMs. He’s an expert on this topic, and his audience, who are also IBM customers, care about it.
Subscribe to IBM Technology on YouTube
