Podcasters of the World Unite!
There has been much talk about the slow growth in new people coming to podcasting. But rather than being depressed about this or in some way justifying it, I believe as a podcast community that we need to make a call to action! So what are we going to do, what do we have to do in order to increase the worldwide audience? Here are some thoughts but join in the conversation…
1) We still have to make it easier to download, listen or subscribe to the show. Do you just “bung” the icons on the page or see it from a non podcasters point of view? Tip: Get someone who knows nothing about podcasting to try and navigate to one of your shows…..
2) Do we sell to non podcasters? Do we sell the benefits to non podcasters? Aim to tell 3 people each day of the power of podcasting.
3) Are we too insular as a group….look at your friends on line or not, are they other podcasters….do you need to reach out to non podcasters?
4) Do we look to help others into podcasting….what about offering your time to a community project, a local school, nursing home to show them how to make their own show!
I believe there is a real risk of complacency in the world of podcasting - sounds strange, I know. But as we grow friends within the podcasting world do we almost make an exclusive club? Are we in danger of not pushing the boundaries - returning to old style radio shows, instead of using podcasting as a new entertaining medium? Of course there are pioneers, but maybe all of us need to increase our pioneering to improve the listener experience!
March 30th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Good food for thought! Here are some ideas:
First off, dispense with the cliqueish love those wretched little “mouse droppings” of podcast icons. Very catchy, if you know what they mean, but why should anyone click something that looks like an overhead view of the Josie-And-The-Pussycats spaceship?! That’s frustrated me from the start. Yes, RSS is hot, and yes it rocks, and yes, it’s changed everything for a select group of us (myself included), but good grief, can’t we come up with a more compelling reason to subscribe and click those RSS/Podcast icons, other than that it’s an excellent and populist implementation of XML that we can all standardize on (well, except for Apple, anyway
We need to get away from the faddish love of little esoteric icons that separate the winners from the losers. We need to treat podcasting as what it is — a really excellent way for audio creators and consumers to connect with each other — snazzy icons or no. And we need to give me people generic, easily understood ways to get to the audio, first, if that’s what they want, and then educate them about RSS and subscribing and whatnot.
It helps that Firefox has an RSS reader built in, but where’s the podcasting piece of it? Maybe I’m missing the holy grail of FX extensions, but FX doesn’t make it easy to find them, in the first place — but that’s another rant for another time.
We definitely need to find better ways to communicate the power of podcasting to others. It’s really self-evident, when you break it down. We need a good manifesto that speaks to casual audiences and audiophiles and producers, all across the board, not falling victim to our own perceived successes.
Are we becoming legends in our own minds? Aren’t we already?
I, myself, have been away from podcasting for about 5 months, due to family illness, so I’m terribly guilty of not only podfading, but also neglecting Podtopia.net. That’s changing as things are looking up, but it also raises the issue of podfading in general, as the premiere pox (IMHO) of our budding industry.
Solution? Here’s an idea — let’s recruit all the folks out there who are producing teleseminars and teleclasses like there’s no tomorrow… let’s team up with the public speakers of the world who need another medium to reach their audiences that doesn’t require 5 hour plane flights in both directions… let’s integrate our technologies with the free conference call services of the world, crossing boundaries and finding cooperative arrangements that not only further the cause of podcasting, but intrigue is in whole new ways with new applications of what we know is a winning technology!
There are literally so many excellent applications of this, it surprises me that “our” numbers are so low.
Let’s teach every grade school student to podcast their reports.
Let’s teach every grade school student to listen to each others’ podcasts.
Let’s festoon all public computer terminals/workstations (that have audio capacity) with postcards and flyers about our podcasts.
Let’s flyer the world, period, with news of our podcasts.
And let’s be responsible adults about it, and keep podcasting, to give folks a reason to not only pay us one visit, but keep coming back.
The Revolution is here!
The Revolution will be Podcast!
Kay Stoner
http://www.podtopia.net
P.S. For a compelling look into what sorts of personalities can be found at different stages of business/industry life cycles, pay a visit to http://www.cyclopraxis.com. Authors of the world unite!
April 3rd, 2007 at 5:12 am
Kay
Great food for thought here and once I have finished the A-Z I will cover a few of your points. Fantastic stuff thanks