Obvious Diversion

The excitement around podcasting is justified. Much like blogging, the internet is empowering individuals with a new medium of easy and accessible speech that can be shared with the world. What’s not to like? Well, it turns out quite a bit. Before you venture into your first podcast, make sure you explore both the advantages and disadvantages of this medium.

Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should

Podcasts are popping up everywhere, but before you record your first podcast, ask yourself the following questions. If it’s good enough to record, why isn’t it good enough to just write about? Does the content you’re putting out in the world really benefit from being offered in podcast form?

There are some places where podcasting can improve a user’s experience, despite it’s disadvantages. Perhaps the content you are presenting is enriched by audio. Deserving examples of where podcasts may be superior to text include music reviews that include snippets of the songs you’re reviewing and speaking drills that aid in learning new languages. Podcasting presents an opportunity for new types of content that deserve to be explored, but it shouldn’t be viewed as a replacement for the plain yet inherently rich text on a page. If you’re going to present something in podcast form, make sure that what you gain from using a podcast makes up for what you lose by not using text.

So, what do you lose by podcasting? Read on.

Search Engines are Deaf

Search engines from Google to Yahoo to MSN are basically deaf. They understand that what you’re putting out into the world is audio, but they can’t comprehend a word of it. One day, voice recognition will solve this problem allowing search engines to index the audio word by word, but today isn’t that day. Tomorrow isn’t looking good either. Until that day comes, your podcast is only as relevant as the scant metadata you have the patience to associate with it. Are you really willing to create a transcript of every podcast to make up for this deficit?

Users Lose Power

The internet has brought unprecedented control over how people consume content. Think about how you are using this article. Unlike television, you have the ability to skip around at will, your eyes jumping only to the headings that interest you, only reading as much as you want and skipping on to something else when you are ready to do so. You can easily copy and paste part of this and send it to a friend. Rereading a section is a simple matter.

Podcasting is a decidedly passive activity on what is a very active platform. With podcasts, all the above power that a user is accustomed to is either not possible or more difficult. Podcasts, like television broadcasts, put much more control back in the hands of the content provider. This switch in who has the power may leave users feeling robbed and depending on their interest in your podcast from moment to moment, they may use the one control still available to them: turning your podcast off.

That Radio Voice

Podcasting, like radio, takes a certain kind of talent. Whether you like radio broadcasting or not, the men and women you hear over the airwaves have learned a lot of lessons over numerous years that go into making any day’s show a success. From enunciating in a radio friendly voice to understanding the proper pacing of a story to dealing with unexpected production problems, it takes years of experience in radio to make such hard work look so easy.

There is much experimentation to be done and much maturation to be had, but understanding the relative disadvantages of this medium will help you to wield and expand upon all the strengths that podcasting has to offer.