Be Loved, Be Bold and Other Resources for Student Content Creators

Author

Mary Patton Murphy, University of MississippiFollow

Date of Award

Spring 5-21-2023

Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Department

English

First Advisor

Brad Conaway

Second Advisor

Timothy Yenter

Third Advisor

Joel C. Amidon

Relational Format

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

The following thesis records the development of the student-produced podcast Be Loved, Be Bold, which ran intermittently from August 2020 to March 2023. Initially a hobby, the podcast became a project for investigating story-telling and marketing among college students, with the transition to project occurring in August 2022. This effort sparked a question, “What is the best way to produce, market, and maintain a faith-based podcast geared towards college students?”

The project was guided by two overarching goals: 1) Maintain the production and marketing techniques of the already existing podcast. 2) Explore other production and marketing techniques to improve the podcast’s quality. To achieve these goals, the project began with an analysis of past podcast performance from the 2020 season using Anchor and Instagram analytics. It examines effective use of GarageBand, Zoom, Auphonic, and Anchor as production avenues, and Instagram and Canva as marketing platforms, and it also explores the evolution of the podcast with the adoption of new techniques in later seasons, particularly in the 2022 season. Ultimately, these techniques allowed the podcast to fall into the top 20% of most followed podcasts.

Alterations to existing production and marketing avenues include the use of a small, inexpensive microphone to improve audio quality, the strategic detailing of podcast show notes, and the effective use of Instagram posts, posting times, and polls. The project concludes that while there are other production and marketing avenues not adopted by this project that might have improved podcast success, such as the use of transcriptions, monetization, and video (e.g., TikTok), the sole use of Anchor and Instagram combined allowed Be Loved, Be Bold to flourish and see improvements from its first season to its final episodes.

Recommended Citation

Murphy, Mary Patton, "Be Loved, Be Bold and Other Resources for Student Content Creators" (2023). Honors Theses. 2940.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/2940

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