DISQUS

Billy Bob · 3 years ago

Wow you covered the Duh factor very well !

Whitney · 3 years ago

I am a newbie, too, although I am a little father down the pike, with 22 shows done and more in the works. I think you have identified one of the important things- have an outline or script to guide any conversation; but we also need to have some overarching storyline or arc- hooking the podcasts together in mini-groups so there's a reason to tune in next time, while letting them stand on their own enough to enable new listeners to tune in and not be overwhelmed by too much "inside baseball". I think it's tricky. If you haven't heard Julian Smith talking about how to maximize your audience using social networking, you should give it a listen- it's a few episodes back on the Canadian Podcast Buffet. Thanks for the mention, and I can't wait to talk further about Grasshopper!

Mack D. Male · 3 years ago

I think the most important part of this post is the last thing you said: "Podcasting is a lot of fun."

When all of the dust settles from the rush to make money from podcasting, that's the one thing that will remain. Podcasting is fun! And there will be thousands of people (maybe millions!) who do it for no other reason than they enjoy it.

Ben Yoskovitz · 3 years ago

Whitney - thanks for the comment. I think your idea of having an over-arching story arc is a good one. It's something I've done, with varying degrees of success, with my blogging, and I can see even more value when it comes to podcasting..."tune in next week..."

Mack - thanks for commenting. There's no question that podcasting is fun, and the dust is being rustled up because there does seem to be opportunity on this new frontier (although radio's been around for a long time.) I think you'll see tons of people doing it for fun, but less than blogging because there's a few more technical requirements and because podcasting has a larger time commitment than blogging (for the publisher and audience.) Still, if the fun is squished out of it, I think the audience will be pretty quick to abandon it...

Martin Ng · 10 months ago

Podcasting is exactly like public speaking ... only easier! You can listen back, re-record, and you don't have to face your audience. But that's no reason to slack off on the quality, of course.

I'd have to add that audience interaction is as important with podcasting as with public speaking, only a little trickier. Ask questions that get them thinking, and give a little pause. Provide comic relief ... and maybe even open-source or royalty-free music, if you can.