Practical Podcasting
Podcasting is about to celebrate its second birthday and we don’t know of a marketer out there who isn’t at least mulling over the possibilities.
Invented in August 2004, podcasts are one of the fastest-growing media channels in history — from the podcasters’ side anyway.
The good news is millions listen to podcasts. The bad news is so many podcasters are broadcasting that the average podcaster gets a few hundred listeners (if they’re lucky.)
MarketingSherpa discovered three listener demographic surprises:
1. According to Arbitron/Edison Media Research, as of June only 22% of people had even heard of “podcasting” but only 11% had ever listened to one.
2. Although many in the podcasting world assume the core audience is young men ages 18-34 in tech fields (your typical geeky early adopters) the truth is actually completely different. Podcasting listenership is extremely broad.
3. Although the term podcasting was inspired by the iPod, you don’t need an iPod to listen to or view a podcast. In fact, the majority of users don’t listen via iPods. According to a May 2006 Podtrac survey, 56% of the audience listen via their computers instead.
Photo by pinkbelt.
Chris Brogan... on August 30th, 2006 5:52 pm
Enter: the Grasshopper New Media model.
There are too many standalone voices. Everyone wants to get out their thoughts and feelings and insights, but the airwaves are multiplying and dividing and segmenting.
We go after a niche, gather voices under one banner, and share multiple viewpoints through one show.
In May of this year, I wrote CONTENT NETWORKS ARE THE NEW BLOGS, stating that the standalone blog will soon fade away. Internet users visit an average of 7 sites a day, period. One might be Gmail/Hotmail/YahooMail. One might be Bloglines. One Flickr. But rarely will it be chrisbrogan.com. That’s a loss leader.
RSS is not the same as a content network, by the way. Editorially shaped voices is what matters.
So, I think the same is true for Podcasting, and have a talk at PodCamp that will go into that. I’m excited about podcasting coming up, but my money’s on aggregating the great voices together into condensed, content-rich targets, and then distributing that mega-content package to the best distribution sources to reach the most ears or eyeballs.
Great post!
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