The Qaf podcast is an informative podcast

The concept of podcasts is becoming more and more popular these days, both in terms of the number of listeners and the number of podcasts. Various Persian podcasts in various general and specialized fields are being published on Iranian podcast platforms and have been able to have a good share in the content market. In the meantime, various specialized podcasts in the field of business have been produced and published Podcast Qaf It is one of these podcasts with a long history. Follow Accomotive’s conversation with Maedeh Ghorbani, the creator of this podcast:

please introduce yourself:

I entered the labor market at the same time as I studied at the university in 1988. I studied Bachelor of Business Management and Master of Strategic Management at the University of Guilan, but I did all kinds of work from teaching English to entrance exam counseling as well as sales work. These were things I worked for other people, if I may say so from my own entrepreneurship, we now have a company that specializes in writing business plans, business plans and justifications. And the startup that has been down for a while because of Corona, and of course we have a family business that the store Electrical and electronic appliances.

How did you feel about moving to podcast production? Did you need it yourself?

It’s an interesting story where and how the podcast started, the first reason I started the podcast was because of myself. I wanted to produce content about something I had studied and worked on for years. At first I did not think at all that I wanted to turn this content into a business. I wanted to start what I love out of personal love. It was in 1997, after completing my master’s degree, that I became acquainted with the Persian podcast. I was familiar with the concept of podcasts through similar language teaching tasks, but not the Persian podcast and its platforms. After getting acquainted with the Persian podcast, due to my interest in my field, I decided to produce a podcast with the aim of raising awareness. Education, I believe that a podcast can not teach a subject, but we can talk about a subject and inform in each episode. I do not intend to teach only because it is not really possible to teach in a podcast. And from this decision until the birth of Qaf, a week passed.

Did you go to other forms of content along with the podcast? I really want to know what is the advantage of producing a podcast over other content?

We also produced complementary content such as video on Instagram. But the reason why I went to the podcast and focused on this form of content was that in 1997, when I started working, no woman was involved in producing Persian business podcast content, or if she was, she was not in the training field. The second reason is the audience’s easy access to the podcast over the video. Of course, I also thought about producing an instructional video on YouTube, but I did not go for it for two reasons. The first is the difficult access of Iranians to YouTube, which has improved a lot these days, and the second is that due to my busy schedule, it was difficult for me to train with a well-groomed appearance in front of the camera, and I do not know much about video editing. But despite the main focus on the podcast, I will move on to these mediums in the future.

Please tell, whats the story of them big puppys …..

We did almost no advertising when we started producing podcasts, but we were active on social media, more on Instagram and less on Twitter.

The interesting thing about the podcast is that in 1998, with the outbreak of the Corona virus and quarantine, people had a lot of free time and became familiar with the podcast. That is, in 1999, we experienced the culmination of podcasts and podcasts. We also gained our audience in this leap.

Another interesting statistic is that in Iran, the castbox platform is used more by other podcasts than the other listeners. There is a section for advertising and branding in this platform. We used this feature several times to introduce ourselves to the audience, which had a good effect, but it is related to the past year.

But in digital marketing, we did not have any promotions, and I am glad that the audience liked the content of Qaf and followed it, and today, 100,000 times when the podcast has been heard, our audience introduces the podcast to each other and shares it on social media. They helped us grow.

What exactly did you focus on in business, and what was the connection between them?

Let me start here, how did we get started and what is the purpose of the content we are producing? I did a needs assessment and found that our podcast content is very general and we do not use very specialized terms. This is because of the target audience we have chosen. Why did we do this? After my research, I saw how much our people are ignorant in the field of business, and because of this ignorance, they are unfortunately losing a lot. You hear it all the time on the podcast, and I say that the purpose of the podcast is to raise awareness. Because we believe that the cause of all the failures and losses that we suffer is this lack of awareness that we have. And this has become a mission for us. So I decided that what I really needed to do was create content for the general public, someone who has no specialized knowledge and does not know specialized terms, and two for people who are starting a new business. A young person, a housewife or a student who is full of dreams and energy and wants to have his own business for any reason. Our goal was to be able to help these people achieve what they want and to inform them as much as we can.

Tell us a little about the challenges of producing a podcast:

Not to mention the challenges, when the first episode was recorded, it was an incredibly funny story. Let me tell you the story of the first episode, in 1997, when my college exams ended, I got acquainted with the podcast and then I got acquainted with a category called the microphone. I said how attractive it is and how good it feels to speak into a microphone. All of this came together to make me want to be a podcaster. Now let’s go back a little bit. It may be interesting for your audience to know that the first time I got acquainted with the microphone was in December 1997, when the microphone was my cousin’s daughter’s birthday present. He is a small child, for the first time I spoke into this microphone and saw how excited I was by the reflection of the sound. If I were to describe exactly how he felt, it would be like a baby being born deaf and blind and seeing something new for the first time. It was a wonderful feeling and I can not really describe it. From that date on, I became acquainted with the microphone. After that I got acquainted with the podcast and started recording. But it took me a week to get to know the podcast and produce it. In this week when the exams were over, I had a cold, I also have a negative perfectionist trait, unfortunately, and I am aware of this. Because I knew that if I did not do it now, I would never do it again. In 1997, in the same week that it started, I started recording with a cold voice on my mobile phone. In the beginning, I could not edit at all, and all I was doing was picking up my cell phone and recording it. I did not even think of installing a sound editing software on a laptop. Because I did not know how to use it, I said I did not want to and I did it with a mobile phone. I would record with my phone and hold a tablet in my other hand and put some background music to play with the tablet. Because the background music was played on a tablet. That’s why the quality of the first few episodes is extremely low. But I never edited it because I think it’s incredibly attractive. Another challenge early on was that it made me want to learn voice editing. It also helped me learn more about podcasts, as well as various foreign websites. The next challenge we face now is the Corona Challenge, which brought all of our interviews online. This feature was both good and bad for us, it was bad because one of the professors we interviewed could not record good sound quality, so the audience may lose a little satisfaction. But the good thing is that it made us go beyond where we are. For example, our guests were from Sweden, Spain and all over the country. It so happened that we were not limited to people who were just around us and wanted to interview them.

Podcast Startups

What market share do you have in your business podcasts? What is the size of this market?

If I want to talk about the size of the Persian podcast market, I mentioned how suddenly the market grew with the spread of Corona and how much the audience became familiar with the Persian podcast, and this is still happening. The atmosphere of the podcast is completely different. I was also reading an article in this area, he wrote that soon the podcast will even be an alternative Video content It becomes. Of course, when it came to Club House, everyone was afraid that Club House would replace podcasts, but that did not happen. There is such a prediction for podcasts, and the good thing about it is that podcasts are so popular in the United States, and the average American listens to the podcast for at least two hours a day. In Iran, according to surveys conducted by a Persian platform, the average time each Iranian listens to a podcast was approximately 30-45 minutes. That number should have grown little by little, and if we want to get to the monthly sum, I do not remember exactly, but I think it was more than 30 hours.

What path do you think a podcast should take to succeed, and where exactly is the Qaf podcast?

The question you asked is a value similar to the life curve that a product has or the life curve that a startup has. I think you mean that a point of formation has a point of growth. Then it reaches maturity.

If we want to place a podcast in this curve, the point of its formation, which is also very important, is the content of the work, and that first of all the content that is going to be produced about that podcast must be quality content and based on the target audience of each podcast. Selects, be selected. To grow a podcast, how a podcast grows, we need to see how that podcast works on its social media. One social media that is very useful for podcast growth and has been used a lot is Twitter. This means that most Twitter audiences use podcasts and listen to podcasts. In addition, if a podcast wants to reach its climax, it must do advertising. We, who were almost the first Persian podcasters, may not be the first generation because the first generation were other podcasts, but we were still among the first at the beginning, we went through a lot of trial and error. But now, fortunately, podcasters have produced as much content for it, written articles, produced books that today have the knowledge on how to build and grow podcasts. And another advantage of Corona was that digital marketing flourished. Digital marketing makes podcasts grow very well. I think it can bring it to maturity and bring more audiences into the podcast market.

Finally, what advice do you have for beginners?

If I want to say one thing at the end and make a recommendation, it’s for people who want to be podcasters and make podcasts, from my experience and that of many other people who are friends with most podcasters and know how they got started. Is. Most podcasts have that perfectionism. How to get started, how to edit, what the quality of the content should be, and so on. I want to say that you should not worry about the quality of work. That you do not have a microphone or complete equipment. Do not be afraid and do not think that in order to become a podcast, you have to have a very good voice. Or have special features. Incidentally, my voice is a normal voice. To become a podcaster, just be yourself and love what you want to do. It is advisable for people who like to be podcasters, not to be afraid to step in this direction and do some trial and error and read the articles and content produced in connection with it. I hope they succeed.