Explore how you would create a PLN prior to building a podcast on a topic of your choice. Please include an exploration of how would you emulate success stories in this space (podcasts that you’ve listened to or seen become noteworthy), and how would you use your PLN with the intent to expand your audience?

As someone who doesn’t listen to podcasts (I would much rather read a book or watch a documentary on the subject), this question is a bit difficult for me. Most of the podcasts that I know of are either celebrities talking about current events and life stories or huge, chart-topping podcasts that have a dedicated fanbase for one topic. If I were to build a podcast and a correlating PLN, I would do something similar to the latter: Find a niche topic that I am knowledgeable about and cover different aspects of that every week and how current events and world relations are impacting and influencing this. To gain traction and popularity, I would post in communities relating to this topic on sites such as Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram, where defined spaces for different interests are available to post on. I would approach this from the point of view of an advertiser, trying to hook people in with a question that both catches the eye and grabs the curiosity of the reader.  Once finding a niche and advertising properly, the rest is up to two things: consistency and luck. That is to say that without both, odds of success are significantly lower. For example, if your favourite TV show wasn’t scheduled and just released whenever the studio felt like it, would you be as inclined to keep looking to see when it aired? Also, you can have the absolute best podcast topics, guests, microphones etc., but without luck and algorithms designed to push you to more new listeners, there is only so much you can do to differentiate yourself from the crowd.

 

Additionally, explore some of the privacy/security concerns to consider when developing an audience on any social media platform? What are the concerns for individuals who become influential in a social space?

Security concerns are an incredible burden for those who have reached fame online: stalkers, fans, and haters alike view you similar to a celebrity: As someone who isn’t really human and can’t be hurt or scared. I have a friend who is a part of a YouTube channel with almost 5 million subscribers at the time of writing this, and he has mentioned to me countless times that he gets approached by strangers that recognize him almost every time he goes out on the street. Almost always, it is a well-meaning fan that simply wants a photo or his autograph, but sometimes it is someone who simply does not like him, usually due to jealousy. Either way, his fans almost never view him as an actual person, but rather someone with no privacy or personal boundaries, which I find quite sad. However, he has embraced this and told me that he forgets about it when his fans tell him how much happiness they get from his videos.