The Seven Deadly Sins of Commercial Podcasting

Follow the money, and you quickly discover that podcasting has gone mainstream and viral.  Podcast Upfronts, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, and PricewaterhouseCoopers released their annual joint report on the podcasting business, projecting that the industry will generate $2 billion in revenue this year and $4 billion by 2024.

Like websites in the mid-1990s and blogs into the 2000s, we’re entering a stage where every business will eventually need a podcast or risk seeing their customers downloading their competitors’ podcasts for leading-edge ideas and support.  This is especially true in education, where national associations and ed-tech consultants have been podcasting for over ten years and have built a large community of education podcast listeners.

However, education companies are just starting to catch on and catch up.  As more businesses add a branded company podcast to their marketing mix, there will likely be numerous stories of company podcasters whose shows achieve mind-numbing commercial success.  But if the history of podcasting is a predictor of the future, hundreds of thousands of company podcasts will be commercial flops. 

Of course, this is the history of all commerce and is probably unavoidable in the aggregate.  But some lessons have already surfaced from the experiences of early Internet radio entrepreneurs, commercial podcasting pioneers, and experienced media professionals who can help those with company podcasting ambitions avoid becoming another corpse in the podcasting graveyard.  They are embodied below in The 7 Deadly Sins of Commercial Podcasting.

1. Podcasting Without a Plan – Variations of this sin include podcasting because you can, podcasting because everybody else is doing it, and podcasting because it’s a cool new way to get your message out.  Not being clear about why you’re creating a digital radio show, what the business plan is for the program, and what value you can reasonably expect to get from the venture is cardinal sin number one.

2. Podcasting Without Providing Unique Value – The media landscape is exploding with new content bringing consumers a mind-numbing number of media options.  To reach consumers overwhelmed by choices, the most critical question you’ll need to be able to answer is, “Give me one really good reason why I should listen to your program.” Your chances of significant commercial success without a unique value proposition are slim to slimmer.

3. Podcasting Like a Broadcaster – Broadcasting is what old-school “mass media” networks do.  It’s communicating to the largest possible audience while hoping to reach a subset of people interested in the content and offerings.  Nanocasting is the polar opposite of broadcasting.  It’s hyper-targeted media content aimed at a narrower, tremendously smaller audience but collectively very interested in the programming and the offerings.  From Mommycast to Autoblog, some of the most promising commercial applications of podcasting we see on the landscape are using the “Nanocasting” model.  The first commandment of Nanocasting is to define and hyper-target your audience.

4. Underestimating the Commitment – You can already record and distribute a podcast without buying equipment, and new offerings are making podcasting even easier.  But commercial podcasters find that the venture neither begins nor ends with capturing audio and creating an RSS feed.  There is considerable planning and preparation, promotion, testing, and business development on the front end.  There is more planning, promotion, testing, and business development on the back end.  Webpronews reported that “nearly half of the blogosphere is dead–that is, inactive.” If the millions of abandoned blogs are any harbinger of the podcasting road ahead, the leading cause of commercial podcast failures will likely be expecting commercial podcasting to be easy.  Creating a podcast is one thing.  Creating and sustaining a commercial media venture is another.  The latter requires consistently developing new content that subscribers find valuable.

5. Believing That Talent and Expertise Don’t Matter.  The resounding message driving the podcasting revolution is that anybody can do it.  If by “do it,” you mean speak into a microphone from your basement and then record and post an audio feed online, this is true.  But talent and expertise become a factor once “vanity podcasting” is distinguished from commercial podcasting by the necessity to attract and keep an audience.  It just takes one stroll down iTunes boulevard to confirm that not every staff writer, professional speaker, CEO, maven, author, entrepreneur, homemaker, hobbyist, enthusiast, or average person has the talent to move from the silent Internet to the “talkies.” Technology gives everyone a soapbox, but getting people to listen and keep listening requires talent and expertise.

6. Being Seduced by the Age of Amateurism. “Citizen journalism” has risen to prominence, consumer-generated media is the rage, and many people have come to trust the amateur and distrust professionals.  But bet on professionalism to win out in commercial podcasting.  Podcasting by the seat of your pants with no knowledge of the media business — or the art and science of creating compelling programming — may be fine for vanity podcats.  But for commercial podcasters, it can be a costly sin.  As a commercial podcaster, you’ll invest much time and at least some money in your media venture.  Bottom line: You’re building a portfolio of valuable programming that many people will want to hear, or you’re building the web-based equivalent of a library of home movies.

7. Believing That the Playing Field Is Level.  The egalitarian veneer of Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and similar podcast sites is potentially misleading and deceptive.  Seeing programming by ABC, FOX, and The New York Times displayed in equal pixels next to programs like Ask a Ninja, Diggnation, and French Maids TV give the impression that the new media playing field is fairly level.  But the savviest commercial podcasters are playing to dominate their field of competitors, and they are moving early to stack the odds in their favor.  Because commercial podcasting is a team sport, savvy media entrepreneurs seek the best players they can access.  They aim to bring a critical combination of media, marketing, e-commerce, and technical expertise to the game.  As commercial podcasting matures (which could be tomorrow), expect to see the gap and the commercial value between the “A-list” programs and “B” movies widen dramatically.