Today’s Tips from AARP highlights ways people 40-plus can work to improve their health, money and happiness. Twice per week, this short-form podcast gives people unique, practical and actionable advice they can quickly adapt to their own lives. Each episode offers three tips delivered in a quick and engaging way to fit into listeners’ busy lives. Upbeat presentations give “wise-friend” tips that listeners can accomplish and that they know comes from a trustworthy source. Want to know the number one exercise to do as you get older? Or how about the best ways to declutter your home, or navigate tricky family dynamics? Today’s Tips combines the latest research along with useful guidance and a dash of fun on topics relevant to the lives of Gen Xers and boomers, all in five minutes or less. Listeners can always find more information on every podcast topic with related content on aarp.org.
AARP created Today’s Tips as a way to expand the organization’s reach and to tap into a slightly younger audience with our content on aging well. We typically focus on the 50+ demographic but were looking to target audience members 40-64 years old. The stats were on our side: Research shows that podcast listenership is growing fastest among Americans 55 and older. Our goal was to demonstrate AARP’s relevance to consumers through highly engaging content and actionable tips to help people live their best lives by improving their health, helping them make smart money decisions and forging strong connections with friends and family (and pets!). Our challenge was that the podcast space is crowded and it’s difficult to stand out and build a sizeable audience.
After launching Today’s Tips on May 9 with three episodes on sleep tips, digital decluttering and pet communication, we were able to leverage AARP’s existing distribution channels. We got the word out about this new podcast through social media, promotion on the aarp.org website, newsletters and through our AARP Now app. We also ran house ads and did some targeted media outreach. We have continued to use many of those tools to promote new podcast episodes weekly. These efforts allowed us to build a base of loyal listeners who tune in regularly. However, toward the end of 2023 we developed a new strategy of embedding episodes in relevant stories published on aarp.org. For example, a popular story on how to lower your blood sugar now features our Today’s Tips episode “Finding Your Sweet Spot: Blood Sugar Tips.” After embedding episodes into our digital content, we saw a significant uptick in downloads. We will continue to find new ways to expand our audience and reach them with our latest life tips, insights and innovation. Our goal is to help listeners live a positive and healthy life at any age.
Today’s Tips from AARP ranks in the top 1 percent of all podcasts. Since launching in May of 2023, we produced 80 episodes and our audience continues to grow. Today’s Tips helps AARP engage with a slightly younger audience (17 percent of all listeners are between the ages of 35 and 44) and to cross-promote some of the most popular content at aarp.org. Our rankings in the “How to” and “Education” categories have continued to climb on the Apple podcast charts. We’ve expanded our reach and our audience by venturing into the podcast space, providing an important new avenue of entry into our consumer-centric content.
