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If you ask most people to list the new media channels they’d consider for either internal or external communication, you’re not likely to hear podcasting mentioned. Ask most new media experts and they’ll shrug off podcasting. A lot of observers will tell you that podcasting is stagnating, while others proclaim it flat-out dead.
It seems that a new medium that doesn’t explode onto the scene like Twitter or Facebook isn’t taken seriously by some who live in the new-media fishbowl. But podcasting is alive and well.
Adoption of podcasting has been slow and steady, but last year eMarketer proclaimed that it has entered the mainstream by virtue of a variety of factors, not the least of which is recognizable media entities repurposing their audio content as podcasts. (One of my favorites is National Public Radio’s On the Media, which I never used to listen to because I’m usually nowhere near a radio when it airs on Sundays. Thanks to the podcast version, I can listen at my leisure.)
According to the eMarketer report, podcasting’s growth “will continue at least through 2013, when there will be 37.6 million people downloading podcasts on a monthly basis, more than double the 2008 figure of 17.4 million.”
Podcasting’s failure to match the phenomenal growth of other social media channels like blogging could be attributed to the hassle that’s still required to subscribe. I keep hoping that the latest iteration of Apple’s iPhone and its competitors will introduce a one-click podcast subscription tool. But since nearly all podcasts are free, there’s no profit incentive. The easiest way to subscribe is still to find a podcast in Apple’s iTunes store and click once to begin getting the latest episodes. If you don’t use iTunes, though, it becomes a lot more difficult.
A subscription is not required to listen to a podcast. In fact, the vast majority of podcast consumption takes place directly from the browser. It’s worth noting that you don’t have to be a regular subscriber to listen from your desktop. Google search results may include a podcast that answers your question. Just today, for example, I stumbled upon a podcast from Directions magazine about the PR potential for location-based services. I wasn’t looking for a podcast and didn’t know Directions had one. It simply came up in a search about location-based services—and it was terrific.
While there’s some truth in many of the criticisms aimed at podcasting (you can’t search audio, producing a podcast is harder than writing a tweet or a blog post, and so on), the medium also offers huge benefits. To begin with, audio is the only communication channel to which you can pay attention while you’re doing something else. All other channels, from video to text to face-to-face, require your complete attention. Ever seen someone reading a newspaper draped over their steering wheel while they’re driving? That scares me to death, but I have no problem with someone piping an MP3 file through their car speakers.
Thus, your audience can catch up on news, views and features while they’re jogging on the treadmill (where it seems most of my podcast’s listeners hear my co-host, Neville Hobson, and me), on the bus, on a plane, doing laundry, walking the dog—you name it.
Smart communicators also recognize that some people are auditory learners; that is, they learn best by hearing something. Offering content through alternate delivery mechanisms ensures that the message gets through. Repetition is not necessarily redundancy.
Podcasts also enable you to deliver great content in a very short window of time. While some podcasts (like mine and Neville’s) run an hour, some are as short as a few minutes. Mignon Fogarty’s Grammar Girl podcast, which is popular enough to have secured her a guest spot on Oprah and a book deal—tackles one grammar issue per episode. (The show has been downloaded more than seven million times.)
Ultimately, though, podcasting supports niche audiences that have trouble finding mainstream content that addresses their interests. Neville and I would have been laughed out of the room if we had suggested a weekly radio program on the convergence of organizational communication and online technology. Yet the audience for our five-year-old podcast continues to grow.
One of my favorite examples of a podcast aimed at a niche audience is the show produced by Evernote, the start-up that lets you save things online that you want to remember. The half-hour show covers advancements in the technology, new features, interesting uses customers are finding for the service and answers to user questions (submitted through Twitter). The entire show is a conversation between the CEO, chief technical officer and marketing manager. It’s engaging, informative and utterly useless to anyone who isn’t an Evernote user. But if you are, the show is an easy and entertaining way to stay engaged with the brand.
There’s also no understating the value of hearing someone’s voice as opposed to reading their words. It’s easier to make an emotional connection when listening to an unscripted conversation.
Podcasting’s health is evidenced by the number of companies still producing them, for both internal and external audiences. Organizations with podcasts run the gamut from Harvard Medical School to Hewlett-Packard.
But to me, the biggest proof that podcasting is alive and well is how so many mainstream media outlets are letting their listeners know that podcasts of their content are available. In the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live the CBS radio affiliate, KCBS, features former Monday Night Football commentator John Madden in a daily chat with the station’s on-air personalities. The conversation is live in the morning, and a segment is rebroadcast a few times throughout the day, after which the sports reporter reminds you that you can download the Madden podcast from the KCBS site.
Podcasting is here to stay. Make sure podcasts are part of your communication toolkit.
Shel Holtz, ABC, IABC Fellow, consults on the use of online media for strategic communication. He has written six communication-focused books and co-hosts the oldest and longest-running communication-focused podcast, For Immediate Release. |
