Setting up beehiiv/podcast/Spotify integration- your experiences?
I've been watching the beehiiv features launched around podcasting over the last few months with curiosity. For context my readers are small artisan business owners (think candlemakers, artists, puzzle makers, indie yarn dyers, etc.).
We produce a quarterly magazine as well as weekly articles for our readers. This context will be helpful later. 😊
I had started doing some audio recordings of articles (won't use the AI transcription as my user base finds this to be a turnoff. ) As a creator/editor it also lets me inject a little personality into the content. I initially added these as audio recordings within each article, as I didn't quite understand how integrated the podcasting features were yet. But doing it this way was a little clunky as you have to click through each article and then listen to the recording. Plus the reporting isn't great if you do it this way. So I have been exploring podcasting to help with this.
We are also on the Scale plan (4 podcast episodes a month). I'm curious if others have explored the podcasting features or integration with Spotify. On our end I started a podcast in beehiiv, and it has a mix of free and premium episodes. These "episodes" are basically the audio articles. I'm utilizing the podcasting features perhaps in a different way, and making it more efficient to distribute audio articles for listeners (as opposed to what might be more traditional podcasting).
I bumbled my way through the beehiiv/Spotify integration (it was hard and didn't quite work as the instruction say, but I am not convinced that was all beehiiv's fault). While it was clunky, I did finally get it to work and have published both free and premium episodes down to my Spotify feed! When someone clicks on the premium episodes, they come over to your beehiiv paywall as advertised. The podcast on Spotify is of course so new that few have found it yet.
I'm curious- for others utilizing the podcasting- are you using the new Spotify integration? Are you thinking about Spotify as new distribution for your existing content? Are you utilizing a mix of free and premium episodes? I would love to compare notes and hear if others are thinking of trying to distribute their content via audio to provide new distribution options.