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Two decades ago and millions of podcasts later, and
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it's likely what you want to talk about is already talked about.
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But if you're not afraid of doing things differently, you can still
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make a splash with your new show.
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Hello, and welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra.
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I'm a fan of doing not normal things with podcasting.
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I hadn't been podcasting for even a year before I decided to blend
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audiobooks and podcasting together.
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And that worked pretty well for me and the myriad authors I helped.
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But the podcasting landscape has shifted a lot since then.
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And while there's still obviously a place in podcasting to go
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long on a topic, there's an ever increasing need to go shorter.
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On recent episodes, I've talked about depth as a way to counter breadth.
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Today, I want to talk about another way to counter breadth, which
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is rather the opposite of depth.
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So look, we are flooded with content, spoiled for choice, as many say.
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More isn't always the answer.
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Not anymore.
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Hence my recent episode of the need for depth instead of breadth.
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But that's not the only way to fight the "more" problem.
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Another way is to curate and distill.
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It's hard to keep up with all of the news about any given topic, whether it's
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Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine or all the news from the world of podcasting.
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It's difficult to keep up with everything about any one thing, unless,
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in fact, that's your full-time gig.
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And most people already have full-time gigs.
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But those people still want to know what's going on inside of any
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given topic they get to choose.
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And for those who've developed the habit and appreciate the "found time" nature of
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podcasting, podcasting is where they turn.
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So, services like Podnews exist.
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James Cridland wades through a hundred and more articles, press
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releases, newsletters, emails, and other forms of inbound information
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every single day to create a three- to five-minute-long daily podcast and
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newsletter that gives his readers and listeners the choice bits of podcasting
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news as they enjoy their breakfast.
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Assuming they're eating breakfast in North America, that is.
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And then you have Brian McCullough, he does the same
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thing for the Techmeme Ride Home.
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Though, his is just a podcast only and his episodes stretch
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usually the 20-minute mark.
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It's longer, but that fits in the drive home slot for the tech news
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he gives out every single day.
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And I rarely miss an episode of either.
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Now, you may have read the New York Times piece recently on the
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growth and expansion of Axios.
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It's a news publishing service that has taken the art of bite-sized
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content and turned it into a science, developing software now
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that cranks out their signature bullet-point style of communication.
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If you couple that with last week's announcement of Spooler's podcasting
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software that lets you edit and republish a single episode multiple times a day
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so it's always current without waiting for some 24-hour window to expire
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or force you to listen to news that was fresh around breakfast time, but
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you couldn't get to it until dinner.
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Things will undoubtedly have changed since now and then, right?
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But helping people make sense of an avalanche of news with
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short-form content isn't the only business case for podcasters.
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There's also the need, a growing need, I'd say, to distill long-form
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content down to just the main points, a CliffsNotes version, if you will.
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Or perhaps Reader's Digest if you, like me, are old enough to remember
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what Reader's Digest actually is.
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Consider the two- to three-hour episode some of the more popular podcasts put
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out every single week or, for some, a couple of times a week and even daily.
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Now, many of those shows are loved, clearly loved, by their diehard
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listeners, listeners, who aren't at all put off by the length of
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time they have to commit to listen.
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It's the price of being in the club, right?
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And also listening to the banter, the opinion, the meanders of the
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conversation, that's integral to their listening enjoyment.
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Oftentimes the facts and the topics themselves are kind of
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boring to the hardcore listeners.
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It's the discussion of those topics that the true fans are listening for.
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But what about the people who do care about the facts and just the facts?
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The people who also recognize the thought leadership and perhaps
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cutting-edge work that is discussed during those long, rambly episodes?
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Could you take your podcasting know-how and then turn around a greatly-abbreviated
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version of those episodes, stripping away all the opinion and banter and just
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reporting on the gist of the conversation?
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Bulleting out the key points in an episode that lasts maybe ten minutes?
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I mean, sure.
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It's a few hours of your life sat listening through and cutting out
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just the good stuff, and then all the work to create an episode.
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But, if a show's length is a barrier for some to listen, it's quite
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possible that a bulleted version that reports on just the facts could equal
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and perhaps even exceed the size of the audience of the source show.
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Now, those are just a couple of examples of atypical podcast content that fight
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the "too much information" problem.
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There are many, many more.
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I mean, history is kind of long.
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Science is hard to understand and rather fast-moving.
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And honestly, just about anything that has its own nerd culture can be made more
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approachable to others if it were unpacked into bite-sized episodes of a podcast.
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Maybe your next podcast.
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With that, I shall be back directly with yet another Podcast Pontifications.
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Cheers!
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Podcast Pontifications is written and narrated by Evo Terra.
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He's on a mission to make podcasting better.
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Links to everything mentioned in today's episode are in the notes
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section of your podcast listening app.
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A written-to-be-read article based on today's episode is available at
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podcastpontifications.com where you'll also find a video version and a corrected
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transcript, both created by Allie Press.
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Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media.
