How did you decide on the theme and format of Culture Club?
As culture writers, we knew that the podcast was going to be an extension of our careers and personal brands. It’s our own space to delve deeper into topics that maybe don’t need a written essay or simply things that we want to bounce off each other, like niche internet trends.
Every episode (aside from guest eps), we start off with a little personal chit-chat, then get into some “popcorn” pop culture bits (i.e. celebrity stories that don’t need a 20 minute chat), then we usually record two “meatier” segments where we can really delve into a trending story or analyse a TikTok trend. We follow it up with recommendations of what media we’ve been consuming that week.
It came to us quite naturally and we haven’t strayed from that format in four years.
What tactics have you used to build and engage with your listener community?
We’ve been recording the podcast since 2020 so it’s been a slow but steady build with our audience. To build and engage with listeners, we’ve been posting on Instagram multiple times a week with tweets and celebrity photo shoots that we think will resonate with them. We always aim to respond to any DMs that come our way and have recently introduced weekly Instagram stories with polls and question boxes relating to the topics we speak about on that week’s podcast to get our listeners' opinions and thoughts.
What are some technical or logistical challenges you've faced, and how did you overcome them?
The biggest logistical challenge for Culture Club is consistency. When we first began the podcast we were both fresh-out-of-uni and trying to build careers in COVID lockdowns. Now, I have a full-time job and Maggie is freelancing after a stint of full-time employment, so arranging our podcast schedules around our jobs and other commitments can be tricky. It means there’s a lot of early morning, late-night and lunchtime records and meetings. But we make it work.
Technical challenges include growing the podcast with video. Maggie is amazing at social media but I don’t naturally take to video editing. Learning how to do that (and seeing my face on camera more frequently) has been an adjustment for sure.
