Rebranded Everyday Environment series offers podcast, blog, social media reels, and webinars
By Erin Garrett
University of Illiinois Extension
The way the public consumes information continues to evolve and change. Podcasts, blogs, and short social media videos are highly consumed forms of digital media. While Extension does create content in these realms, compared to in-person programming and webinars, the ratio of these other forms of outreach is quite low.
Members of Illinois Extension’s Natural Resources, Environment, and Energy team Abigail Garofalo, Amy Lefringhouse, and Erin Garrett were looking for ways to expand our asynchronous forms of outreach. We determined that creating blogs, podcasts, and short social media videos were valuable ways to share information.
We designed a three-month biannual season of content called Everyday Environment that includes 12 weekly podcast episodes with accompanying blog posts, a series of short videos, and two webinars. We conducted this work in collaboration with Emily Steele and Extension’s marketing and communications team. Everyday Environment dives into the intricate web of connections that bind us to the natural world. From water, air, energy, plants, and animals to the complex interactions within these elements, our team aims to unravel the ties that link us to our environment. We strive to foster a deeper understanding of these connections among the residents of Illinois.
Podcast: We transitioned our existing podcast, Spotlight on Natural Resources, into the Everyday Environment podcast. We gave the podcast a new spin by producing longer, more conversational episodes. Abigail, Erin, and Amy serve as co-hosts and invite guests from across Extension, U of I, and out-of-state to speak about their areas of expertise in-depth.
Blog: We transitioned the Naturalist News blog, originally created for Master Naturalist volunteers, into the Everyday Environment blog. Each podcast episode released is accompanied by a blog written on the same topic. This way, we reach members of the public with different preferences for consuming content.
Webinars: We took our monthly webinar series created in 2020 and reduced the number of webinars from monthly to quarterly.
Short videos: We added a short video series of “reels” that could be shared across YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. These were focused on steps people can take to address an environmental issue.
Season 1: Climate Change
Within a season, all the released content is connected to one overall theme. The theme of our inaugural season was climate change. Each piece of content addressed a different aspect of climate change and what it means for Illinois residents. This fall’s topics included how urban forests contribute to storing carbon, impacts of climate change on invasive species, human health considerations related to a changing climate, and many more.
We’ve seen a positive response to our August - October content release:
- From July 16 - October 31, the Everyday Environment website had 1,429 views.
- Our 6,480 subscribers received a weekly email newsletter sharing the latest content. Those newsletters had an average open rate of 51.1%, twice the average industry standard. The link click rate ranged between 3.99% and 10.92% per newsletter, which is above the industry standard of 2.5%.
- The new podcast format resulted in an average of 142 listens in the first 30 days after release, nearly double our previous average of 74 listens in the first 30 days.
- The blogs averaged 209 reads per blog post.
- The short-form videos each generated between 999 and 1713 views. The Welcome to Everyday Environment one-minute introduction video has over 32,000 views, and an additional promo video has over 10,000 views.
We invite you to check out our content and consider ways you can share information across multiple outreach channels!
