VPR released a trailer teasing their Hearken-powered podcast, Brave Little State. In it, the co-producers explain the Hearken process and get their audience pumped about participating. It features some questions from Vermonters that they'd already gathered in person beforehand. They insist that there is no question "too serious or too unserious" (definitely our belief!) and they prove it by showcasing a wide variety of questions, from Vermont's accent to the high price of its utility bills to addiction crises in the state.

The trailer and introduction is on a web post that repeats the key information and includes the project's form embed so people can ask their questions. The post also includes a list embed showing the questions they'd already gotten with that phrase "There's no question too serious or un-serious." right above it.

They commissioned a dedicated theme song for the podcast that debuts in the trailer and plays in every episode. They close it out with the podcast's tagline:  Be brave. Ask questions. 

Giving your series a name, a jingle, or a tagline can all go a long way to creating a distinct brand for your Hearken-powered series that makes it easy for your audience to recognize.

WUWM in Milwaukee has a Hearken general assignment series called Bubbler Talk that airs weekly with a short audio feature and a web story. (Their tagline: Quenching Milwaukee's thirst for knowledge.) After getting into a rhythm with that first series, they started thinking of ways to expand in their use of Hearken. They decided to launch a new Hearken series called Beats Me to gather questions for their beat reporters. They started out with their environment, education, and race & ethnicity beats, and have recently added a form for Innovation, and how it impacts business, science, health, and technology.

The beat reporters and Michelle Maternowski, the newsroom's Hearken point-person, went on Lake Effect, the station's daily news magazine show, to introduce the series to their listeners in an eight-minute segment. In the on-air segment and the web post, they wisely leveraged their audience's familiarity with Bubbler Talk to explain how the new series would work. They said that these issues are so big that it can be hard to decide where to begin, so they wanted to tap into their audience's curiosity to produce community-driven stories.

"Much like what we do for our series  Bubbler Talk - where we answer YOUR questions about the Milwaukee area, our new series, Beats Me, will answer YOUR questions about how education, the environment and race impacts life here."

The segment was pulled into a web post featuring form embeds and background on each of the four beats.

Investing promotional effort into your initial launch is key, with introductory segments and trailers like these. They provide a foundation for your audience to understand how the initiative will work and how they can participate. But, it's important to keep promoting your Hearken efforts frequently after your launch too. 

Periodically remind your audience of the chance to ask questions through on-air promos. How you do this depends on your editorial schedule: 

Either way, repetition is key! 

If you want to keep question-gathering promos fresh, one strategy is to cut together tape of other question-askers, whether from previous stories or other outreach you've done to gather questions. Just like in the VPR trailer, featuring other audience members' questions nicely illustrates for your audience the scope of what your series could cover or has already.  KALW cut together question-asker tape to encourage their audience to submit responses to their general assignment series Hey Area in this promo.

If you were able to interact with a question-asker in a previous story (and you have tape), you can use some of that audio for your audio promos to highlight another aspect of the public-powered process: ride-alongs with reporters! 

You can choose to make your promos super artistic as well!  WYSO, a small but mighty public radio station in Yellow Springs, Ohio, had then-intern Char Daston craft a delightfully nerdy Alice in Wonderland-themed promo calling for questions for their series WYSO Curious. 

When you create a voting round, we recommend you create an on-air promo announcing the round and inviting the audience to vote. Remind them it's part of your series where you invite the audience asks questions and vote on what they most want to see answered. (In addition to votes, you could make a plug again to ask their own questions, too.)

WFPL has a creative strategy for promoting voting rounds on-air: they craft separate 30-second promos for each individual question in the current voting round. They go into some detail about the question at hand and feature tape of the question-asker. They each serve as a mini-campaign for you to vote for that response. They are able to include question-asker tape from each question at this phase, because their workflow includes alerting the folks whose responses are in a round right as you are preparing to create it, which we recommend. (Check out our guide to alerting folks when their response is in a voting round.) 

Each one wraps up with the same call to go vote on their website: "It's one of the questions Curious Louisville might answer next, if you choose it. Cast your vote [today] at curiouslouisville.org." 

Here are the five promos for each of the individual responses from the same Curious Louisville voting round: questions about: 

Once a question is assigned and reporting is underway, you have several on-air promo opportunities. A reporter can get onto a live show and talk about what they're discovering in the process of finding an answer, and remind the audience to check for the final piece. Or, you can simply tease some tape once production is complete.

WFPL teases upcoming Curious Louisville episodes with on-air promos. They give some narration about the topic and play some tape of the question-asker talking about their question. In addition to getting the audience intrigued about the upcoming episode, it's also a reminder to them that Curious Louisville is an ongoing series where they can engage too. A promo teasing their "special derby edition," this one on derby hats, starts with the phrase "great questions make great radio," a great reminder for the audience of the philosophy behind the series.

These promos make sure to shout out that it's an installment of "Curious Louisville, where you ask the questions and we find the answers on 89.3 WFPL and at curiouslouisville.org."  

WBEZ's Curious City teases the next week's episode at the end of each week's audio story.

After a story comes out, there's more chances to let your audience in on the process! See if there's a chance for the reporter to get on one of your station's live shows to air some tape and talk about the story: what they discovered, the process of finding the answer, and any fun anecdotes. (In addition to this option, you could also choose to answer some questions on-air live, rather than a reported feature. Check out this help doc to see examples!) 

WBEZ's Curious City reporters pop in on their morning talk show, Morning Shift, after a piece has come out. Those segments are a chance, also, to remind your audience to go back to your site either to ask their own questions, to ask you follow-up questions about your story, or to vote if you have a round going. 

Not only are on-air two-ways a method to reach a broader audience with the story: It's also a chance to remind your audience that they can engage in the public-powered process as well. Make sure to replicate the story best practices that we recommend any time you're talking about your Hearken project: 

We're always happy when someone sends us an on-air promo so we can hear how you talk to your audience, provide feedback, and share with our partners! Feel free to ask your account manager for messaging help with any promotion you do, on-air and beyond.