Tag Archives: podcasting

My Digital Life Show #3: Top 13 Things that “Really” Build a Podcast Audience

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My Digital Life with Rob Greenlee

My Digital Life with Rob Greenlee

Here is episode #3 of the new “My Digital Life Show with Rob Greenlee” for Sunday, June 2nd 2013.

This episode is even closer to the vision that I have for this show, but have more improvements to come.  You will notice that I improved the audio production and am now using my Sure SM7B microphone and Mackie 802-VLZ3 mixer.  This change from episode one is dramatic.

My goal here is not do a monologue show, but to have some guests sprinkled in to add some varied opinions and to get listeners more involved in the show.

The topic this week stays focused on my passion and that is the medium of “Podcasting”.

The Topics This Week:
1) Top 13 Things that “Really” Build a Podcast Audience
2) EFF Legal Defense fundraising $50K+ to Fight a “Podcast Patent Troll”

Here are links to things mentioned in the show:

The EFF Save Podcasting effort is here, the link to submit and see submitted prior art is here

Thank you to Michael Wolf and JD Sutter for contributing with comments that you will hear in this episode.  Here is a link to the article written by JD Sutter.

Here is a link to the “Speaking of That” podcast hosted by Robert Keeme of which I played a snippet.  Thanks guys for the nice comments.

Please feel free to give me feedback on this show to: rob at robgreenlee dotcom or twitter @robgreenlee .  Leave some of your thoughts here in the comments and I will respond to them in next week episode.

Top 13 Things That “Really” Build A Podcast Audience

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I have been recently reading the advice given by many others about ways to promote your podcast.  Many focus on new types of things like distributing CD’s and making business cards for your show – not really the best of ideas really!  I believe in making sure you are doing the basics well first before doing some of these other ideas.  While all the promo ideas given online can help to some degree or so.  The real keys to building your show audience boil down to these things mainly – doing these things well WILL GROW YOUR SHOW:

  1. Great audio/video quality
  2. Entertaining or informative topics with passion, knowledge, personality are KING!
  3. Compelling album art that is refreshed/updated regularly
  4. Clear and interesting show name/series descriptions
  5. Get your show distributed to as many aggregation platforms as possible – even broadcast radio
  6. Major parts of the show include audience involvement/contribution to show and topics
  7. Meet your audience in the real world as much as you can
  8. Guest on other podcasts/radio/TV shows – as a topic expert or entertainer
  9. Contribute via written word to online topic discussions in your genre
  10. Produce shows on a consistant basis and at a fairly consistant duration
  11. Join a network of other podcasters
  12. Work to be known locally in your community and gain local media attention
  13. Get top listing in search engines based on your topic genre keywords

On-Demand and Time-Shifted Talk Radio is the Future of Audio Podcasting

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The talk of the death of podcasting is an annual right of passage these days,  but I am starting to think that nothing is really wrong in the podcasting medium. We are just seeing the natural maturation of this form of media.  Saying that is not to discount the need for the medium to improve its distribution platforms and offer greater quality content. It seems like the future should be centered on developing more synergy with the broadcast radio side.  I know this is a little counter to what we might all think, but really radio has wide adoption and podcasting fills a need that radio is weak at and that is around on-demand and time-shifted consumption of serialized audio programming.  It seems like many of the folks on the radio side don’t really get podcasting and the podcasting side does not get how radio works.  Both could really learn from the other and help each other.

I also see the video side of podcasting beginning to fade away as video shifts to being more cloud based-streaming that can be more easily monitized.  It seems that within a few short years podcasting will be 90% audio and radio stations will be much larger podcasters then they are today.  The other major concern area for me is around distribution platforms viability long-term as it is very difficult for any of these platforms to make any or enough money to keep investing in these platforms.

Here is an excerpt from a recent Wired Gadget Lab article:

“Stitcher Stitcher is a free talk radio app that lets you listen to your favorite programs on demand. You can choose from more than 7,000 shows, and the app is available on all major phone platforms — including Windows Phone for the first time.

“We decided that the time was right to create a Windows Phone Mango app now that Windows Phone is definitely becoming the third member of the space,” said Collin Billings, Stitcher’s director of user experience.

Stitcher aggregates popular content by source (for example, NPR, BBC and CNN) and by topic (for example, food and motorcycles). Content is wirelessly synced, so if you start listening to a program on your Windows Phone, you can pick up where you left off on an Internet-connected radio or on your PC.

The app’s name is derived from the practice of “stitching” together multiple stations and podcasts to create a personalized talk radio playlist. If you’re not quite sure what to listen to, or are looking to branch out to new sources, you can see what other listeners of the same show also liked.”

I need to say that the lack of podcast aggregator platform revenue is number 1# limiting issue around podcast distribution platform innovation and improvement.  The answer to this question looks a lot like Stitcher with more integration with internet radio in the car and on mobile/wifi devices.