Chip Griffin: Pardon the Disruption

What Ails Podcasting?

This week Shel Holtz kicked off quite a discussion with his post "Why Hasn't Podcasting Gone Mainstream?"  I have been participating in the dialogue in the comments on his post, but I think it merits a complete post of its own here.

Shel argues that it is a problem of infrastructure.  He says that watching video online is easy, while audio is comparatively hard. 

One survey found that more than half of all podcast listeners don't use a portable device. Is it because that is too difficult or is it because that's where they want to listen?

I certainly understand the argument that listening to podcasts isn't exactly simple if you want to sync to a portable device, but I don't think that's the answer to the challenge by a long shot.  It is part of it, sure, and I include it among my 10 reasons for slow podcast adoption (below), but ultimately if people want to hear truly compelling content they will work hard to get it.  Just look at the lengths people will go to get Police concert tickets or to buy a Wii.

Here then are the top 10 reasons I can think of why podcasting isn't yet mainstream.

1. It's the Content, Stupid.  There’s some good podcast content out there, but far less than most of us who are directly involved believe.  It is hard to judge one’s own work and that of colleagues.  And lest we forget what works in radio today, let's review: music, talk shows, and news.  Yet how many podcasts fall in to those categories?  Yes, we can (and should) cater to niches, but we have to find a new way to do it.  Personally, I believe the answer lies in uniting text, audio, and video under one roof to reach niches (rather than the silo approach most are using today), but that's something for a different post.
2. Podcasts are too host-centric. Think about how different the content of podcasts is versus successful radio.  Many podcasts tend to be rambling, somewhat self-serving commentaries (my own included from time to time).  Most good radio is interactive between host and caller or host and guest.  Very few survive on the backs of the host(s) alone.
3. Radio facilitates snacking, podcasting encourages dining.  Radio is taken in digestible chunks for durations determined by the listener.  Podcasts are created in durations determined by the creator.  You can’t tune in for the last few minutes of a podcast easily. Podcasts don’t require, but they do encourage, more commitment. There is no serendipity as you must select your show explicitly (usually). And if you are only going to listen to a portion, it will generally be at the start of the podcast which—let’s face it—is not always where most podcasts have their best content.  As with talk radio, the best content often is somewhere in the middle since the beginning is often introductory, housekeeping kind of stuff.  If you don’t get hooked right out of the gate, then you likely will stay away.  Whereas you could tune in to talk radio and get hooked by something 2/3 of the way through that day’s show.  Yes, with radio it is a crapshoot, but there are advantages (and, yes, disadvantages) to that format.
4. People don’t listen to radio when tethered to their computers or similar devices.  They listen when in their cars or on the porch or at the beach.  Only geeks like us have our devices with us 24/7.
5. Average people don’t want to listen to work-related content during off hours.  Employers don’t want employees listening during work hours.  Hence, business podcasts don’t take off beyond a small niche.
6. I can’t have real-time interaction with a podcast, either directly or vicariously.  AM talk radio thrives in part because of timely caller interaction. Podcast comments draw out a discussion that would be better if it were had all at one time, rather than in snippets over the course of several weeks.
7. The mainstream is turned off by the use of geeky terms like podcasting and RSS. People think podcasts need to be listened to on an iPod, even though I recall reading some data at one point that suggests most people listen to them on their computers directly.  Anytime you have to explain the content format to someone, you lose.
8. Podcasts aren’t as easy to listen to as we would all have people believe.  I have to mud wrestle with iTunes on a regular basis to get it to update my subscriptions in a timely fashion and then properly sync them to my iPod.  And I know what I am doing, imagine how it is for casual users. 
9. Flexibility doesn't equal simplicity. The same things that make podcasts more flexible also make it more challenging for the casual listener. Give people too many options, and you will actually see engagement decrease.
10. Royalty problems block music shows. “FM” podcasts (music ones) are obviously hamstrung by licensing issues.

Rather than dismissing old media, in this case radio, as many new media mavens are fond of doing, we ought to study it and learn from it.  Fundamentally, I don't believe in new media per se.  As Christopher Penn commented not long ago (I forget where), "media is media."

A Novel Way to Sponsor a Podcast

Popular marketing podcaster Joseph Jaffe of Across the Sound tossed out an idea on his show last weekend: if someone would buy him an iPhone, it would be worth a sponsorship of one of his upcoming shows.  Since we've had good luck sponsoring For Immediate Release with Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson as well as NewCommRoad with Bryan Person, I jumped at the chance. 

Jaffe now has an iPhone and CustomScoop will be sponsoring an upcoming episode.  Check out Jaffe Juice for more details on how this sponsorship came to be.

Technorati tags: Joseph Jaffe, Across the Sound, advertising, sponsorship, podcast, iPhone

Congrats to Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson

Their leading public relations industry podcast, For Immediate Release, has just struck a sponsorship agreement with Ragan Communications.  I couldn't be more pleased for Shel and Neville and for the FIR community.

The deal includes promotion of the FIR podcast by Ragan, which makes it somewhat unique as sponsorship models go.  Hopefully this will help to expand the already considerable audience that FIR enjoys.

As a sponsor of the podcast for the past 7 months or so (hard to believe it has been that long), my own company, CustomScoop, has seen the value that this show creates.  I enjoy being a regular contributor to the show as well as a sponsor, and I look forward to Ragan's participation in the community.

Neville writes today on his own blog about the significance:

We’ve said it before many times - FIR is all about community.

Since we began FIR in January 2005, we have made listeners a constituent element of each H&H Report. Our network of correspondents - Lee Hopkins in Australia; Dan York in Vermont, USA; David Phillips in the UK; and occasionally, Eric Schwartzman in Los Angeles and Sallie Goetsch in the SF Bay area - are constituent elements of what FIR is.

We see our sponsors as constituent elements of the community, too. Now Ragan joins our current sponsor CustomScoop whose CEO Chip Griffin personifies what sponsor-as-community-member really is all about with the Media Monitoring Minute segment in each show.

Kudos to Shel and Neville for creating such a valuable resource for the PR and marketing community interested in the intersection of technology and communications. 

Technorati Tags: For Immediate Release, podcasting, podcast sponsorship, advertising, Ragan Communications, Mark Ragan, Shel Holtz, Neville Hobson, public relations, marketing, marcom, communications

Book Review: How to Do Everything with Podcasting by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson

My friends Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson of the For Immediate Release podcast have written a stellar new book that will appeal to anyone interested in podcasting.  Aspiring podcasters will find a solid how-to manual.  Current podcasters will discover tips and tricks they may have overlooked.  And the curious will get a great understanding of what podcasts are, how they are created, and what their value is.

How to Do Everything with Podcasting contains over 300 pages of goodness.  Shel and Neville use a great mixture of text and visual aids to help communicate their message.  The tone is simple but not condescending.  Broken into chunks, this book also serves as a great reference (and I suspect it will get dog-eared on my shelf as I keep going back to it).

The book contains five main sections:

• Get Started With Podcasting. Here you learn what podcasting is, how to listen, and where to find interesting podcasts.  All the basics one should understand before seriously contemplating creating a podcast.
• Produce Your First Podcast.  I suspect this will be the most appealing portion of the book for most readers.  It includes all of the information you need from a hardware, software, and distribution perspective to get started.  It meets a range of budgets, from a very simple $20 setup to options to spend hundreds of dollars or more.  Shel and Neville explain scary terms like "compression" and "normalization" and explain what they are and how they can improve the quality of your podcast if you choose.
• Refining Your Podcast.  Here's where this book really sets itself apart from others in the market.  Shel and Neville are communicators, first and foremost.  Many podcasting books come at the topic from an audio background, but these two start with the substance.  In this section, you learn to determine the objectives for your podcast, understand your audience and what it wants, and how to incorporate format choices that meet these needs.  Ultimately, the authors make the point that podcasting is a tool, not an end in itself.  Determine what you want to accomplish, and then decide if a podcast is the right medium.
• Make Money with Your Podcast.  While admitting up-front that profitability is unlikely to be the foremost goal for most readers, the authors do a nice job of identifying potential revenue streams for those who may be interested.  Featured are less obvious ideas that many may overlook, including merchandising, to go along with typical advertising and sponsorship scenarios.
• Use a Podcast As a Business Communication Tool. Again, they're communicators so this section builds upon the foundation set in the third section on objectives.  Shel and Neville outline clear ideas on how a podcast could be used in a business setting, including for building reputation, marketing, internal communications, customer dialogue, and more.  They even include an explanation of when you shouldn't use podcasting as a tool.

There weren't many misses that I noticed, but one did jump out at me. There's no mention that I can recall about a software tool called the Levelator which is an invaluable tool for beginning podcasters to improve the audio quality of their podcast for free.  I'm pretty sure they plug it in their workshops, so I'm not sure why it missed the cut in the book.

And one other thing: it would have been nice if the publisher could have come up with some different graphics between sections.  They simply repeat the cover art, so by the end of the book it gets really old! :)

Of course, there's much more to the book than what I've been able to describe here, so I encourage you to check it out for yourself.

In addition, the book's companion web site includes additional resources, including a video demonstration by Shel of one of the more complicated techniques described in the book.

Technorati Tags: How to Do Everything with Podcasting, podcast, Shel Holtz, Neville Hobson, For Immediate Release, podcasting, book review, business books

Come Learn About Social Media

On May 15, Doug Haslam of Topaz Partners and I will present a Social Media Skills Workshop for the PRSA Yankee Chapter.  The event will be held at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, NH from 1-5 PM.  Cost is $35 for PRSA Yankee Chapter members and $45 for non-members.

This will be an information packed afternoon with time for hands-on learning. Below is the official description, or you can download the event flyer with tentative agenda and registration form in PDF format.  If you're interested in learning more about blogs, podcasts, and other forms of social media, I encourage you to register now. 

SOCIAL MEDIA SKILLS WORKSHOP
presented by Yankee Chapter/PRSA and sponsored by Southern NH University

Spend a half-day (1-5pm) learning all about social media, including blogs and podcasts.  By the end of this seminar, you will have learned how to:

• Pitch your company or client successfully!
• Build relationships through commenting on blogs and podcasts!
• Communicate your message unfiltered through your own blog or podcast!
• Assess your social media coverage using free or paid services! 

In addition, part of the workshop will include hands-on training where you will actually help create a simple blog and podcast.

Technorati tags: PRSA Yankee, PRSA, social media, professional development, public relations

If You Own an iPod, You Probably Listen to Less Radio

Podcasting News points to a new Abritron report that covers the portable media space:

While Arbitron’s analysis paints a fairly rosy picture of the state of radio, their stats confirm several industry trends that may cause concern for traditional radio broadcasters:

• More and more people are getting portable media players. The percent of Americans that have portable media players grew from 22% to 30% in the last year.
• Many portable media player owners listen to less radio. Arbitron reports that about a third of those that own iPods or other portable media players listen to less radio as a result.
• Podcasting is one of the few audio platforms seeing significant growth. Awareness of podcasting has lept ahead of HD radio, and its audience is catching up with Internet radio’s audience.
• The audience that traditional media is losing to Internet media tends to be young and affluent.

Technorati tags: Podcasting News, Arbitron, radio, podcasting, portable media

How to Improve Comments on Podcasts

I happen to believe that podcasts are much more interesting when they have listener comments.  Though I don't share Michael O'Connor Clarke's general disdain for the quality of podcasts, I do share his distaste for "the kissyfest 'love the show' comments from loyal listeners."

The problem with most comments is that, like letters to the editor, they frequently show up when the topic at hand has gone stone cold.  Take for instance PRobecast #9 -- and I'm not picking on my friends at Topaz Partners here, it's just the podcast I'm listening to as I type.  I'd be inclined to leave a comment about the Fred Vogelstein story.  Except it happened over a week ago so by the time most folks listen to PRobecast #10 and hear my rant, it would be 2 weeks after anyone cared about the topic.  Since most business podcasts are weekly at best this 2 week lag will occur frequently. 

That's why I think Joseph Jaffe may be on to something. This morning and last night he was Twittering about topics that he wants to discuss on the next Across the Sound podcast and soliciting comments in advance of the show.  That's a great idea.  By gathering content from others for timely topics, the comments become more participation and less after the fact, letter to the editor drivel.

Now, Twitter may or may not be the right venue.  It's likely to generate a serious echo chamber effect where the same usual suspects comment all the time.  But many podcasts have that anyway and maybe it isn't so bad -- most talking head shows on TV or radio have similar commentators from week to week.

But I love the idea.  It makes comments more timely and valuable as contributions to the discussion.

Maybe I'll start posting topics to my blog in advance of my shows to try to get listener contributions like this...

Technorati tags: Joseph Jaffe, Michael O'Connor Clarke, podcasts, podcasting, listener comments, Twitter