Podcasting Predictions For 2015 - The Podcast Report Episode #27

Podcast predictions for 2015. It's the last show of 2014. It's the podcast report. Episode 27. Show hotline is 503-897-1290. It's the podcast Report with Paul Colligan. And here's Paul. We'll start this one with a couple of big ideas for you. Big idea number one. This is a theme you've heard a lot on this show, but podcasting is about content, not technology. This is going to be a big issue in 2015. The other big idea for this episode is that new platforms won't increase your audience. You will. Hey, my name is Paul Kolig and this is the Podcast Report. I am a 7 time best selling author of the business podcasting bible, the number one top selling podcast strategies and the recently released how to Podcast. I've been in podcasting since the beginning. Love this industry. I have since day one, two audiences for this show, the podcaster and you're a fun group and I'm loving helping you think things through, bringing up the dialogue a little bit. And then of course there are those of you who are thinking about getting into podcasting and you want to have a different way to look at podcasting, a way to kind of work through all of this. You are welcome to the show as well. This is not a massive play, but this is a deep one and we're going to have some fun. So today's topic is podcast predictions for 2015. Now, why this topic? Well, first of all, I have a long history of doing prediction shows, prediction blog posts, prediction this prediction that. I actually just got off an episode of the Podcast Roundtable where I shared some of these. I'll have a link to that at the Show Notes. Show Notes can be found@thepodcastreport.com 27. It's just fun to look to the future because if you look to the future the right way, you do it intelligently, kind of looking at the trends you can kind of think your way into, maybe doing things a little bit better, doing things a little bit more on purpose. And that's kind of what we're looking at here. My predictions are as follows. They're a bit tongue in cheek, but they are realistic and they are about what's going on. So podcast prediction number one is 5,000 new seven day a week podcasts with the word on fire in the title. It's obviously a bit of an homage to John Dumas and what he's done with podcasters, paradise and Entrepreneur on Fire, but it's not just John, it's cereal, it's Startup, it's a bunch of others. There are a number of people who just kind of think like, okay, I bought the book, I've listened to the show, I bought the formula, and I'm progressing ahead. Well, that's just not the way that it works. Yes, Serial is knocking out of the park. Yes, John continues to dominate. Yes, some people are doing incredibly well, but that's not enough. I was trying to think of a parallel that I've seen to what's going on here, and it's actually happening with the Marvel movies right now. The joke is that if Hollywood wants to do anything, it has to be with superheroes. And Stan Lee has to do a commercial in it, so he has to do a cameo on it. And that's just not the case. Right now, the best movies are the superhero movies. And right now, the best podcasts are what John's doing and what Serial is doing and what, you know, the guys over at Startup are doing. But that's not to say that the only podcast come from that we will see very soon, a big budget podcast fail miserably. And that just means that the podcast failed miserably. Just the same way we're going to see a Marvel movie soon. We're going to see something with Stan Lee in it, ladies and gentlemen, that is not going to do well. And people are going to blame and they're going to go, oh, the age of the superhero movie is dead, or the age of the storytelling podcast is dead, or the age of the interviewing podcast is dead. That's not the case. It's just that they did it wrong this time. It didn't work. Formulas are great, but formulas are not magic. See, what's interesting about podcasting is podcasting's biggest strength is also really its biggest strength problem. The fact that we can get in easily with an under $100 mic. I mean, that's what I'm this whole new book I'm hoping to bring in. And if you're not familiar with the book, listen to episode 26, what We're Trying to do there. I'm trying to bring people into this. I'm trying to show people that they can podcast. It's easy to do. You don't have to buy expensive software. You don't have to buy expensive microphones. You don't have to buy these things. Well, as a result, a lot of people are getting into podcasting, and as a result of a lot of people getting into podcasting, they're Looking for formulas, and some of them are going to fail miserably. So the prediction is we're going to see a lot of people try to replicate what they've seen others do, and it's not going to go well. Will there be bloodshed in the streets of people claiming podcasting's dead much the same way they claim that Marvel movies are dead? I don't know. Maybe. Possibly. I was in Portland. I actually worked on the same floor as the Portland film commission when Mr. Holland's opus came out. I don't know if you remember that movie or not, but it did really well. It was really good, feel good movie. And all of a sudden Portland became the place to make movies. And then suddenly that terrible Madonna movie Body of Evidence came out and, well, gosh darn it, Portland wasn't the place to make movies anymore. And it was about the movie of body of evidence versus the movie of Mr. Holland's opus. Not was Portland in or out of favor. And the same thing is true with podcasting. So we're going to see an illusion of a bunch of people trying to, trying to follow a formula, making it work. Exactly. It not working. Blame it on podc. It's not going to go well. My next big prediction for 2015 is simply we're going to see a number, a pretty significant number of pointless podcast in a box products. Now, we've seen this before in the past. Basically pay your money talk here, podcast comes out the other side. And making podcasts simpler is exactly what I'm trying to do with the podcast book. It's exactly what I'm trying to do in terms of dialogue and getting people to talk about these things. But podcasting has never been about the tech. Podcasting is about. I've said this on the show over and over again. What is your market? What is your message to that market? What is the media that you're connecting with that market with? And then finally, where is the monetization level? Nowhere in that four step process is there an element of the tech. Now, I don't want the tech to be complicated. That's why I'm writing the book. I'm all for the tech being easy, but unfortunately these podcast in a box products are going to focus so hard on it being easy or they're going to focus so strongly on it being easy that, well, gosh darn it, people are going to forget what is their market, what is the message, how do we connect with the media and then where the money comes from. In the history of podcasting we've seen people fail with a lot more money and fail bigger. And it's something that we want to, you know, take a look at. Historically, Mi Vio, which was Adam Curry's group, I mean, that just went down fast. Potango went down fast. Gigavox went down fast. A lot of these organizations that claim to make this happen, it went down fast because they forgot, or maybe in some cases they never even realized that podcasting is not about the tech. I cannot stress that enough now. Great news. Podcasting is easy. You don't need podcasts in a box. You need a cheap microphone and some freeware software to make this happen so you can do this. But a number of pointless podcasts in a box products are going to launch. People are going to think, if I jump in on this, my podcast is going to be huge. And that's just not the case. That's just not the way it's going to happen. So my last one is big announcements are going to come across and they're going to have minimal show results. There are people who are going to hear a piece of news, hear something that's happening in the tech place, in the podcasting place. They're going to go, oh, man, this is huge for me. A couple episodes back, we had Rob from Libsyn talking about iOS8 and how much it was going to affect the podcasting space. And it's had some effect. But there's not a podcaster on the planet who suddenly got a lot more listeners because iOS8 has podcast included. There's not a podcast on the planet who's going to have more listeners If Spotify turns on podcasting, which we chatted about a couple of episodes. If people make it easier on the Podcasters Roundtable today, and I'll include a link to that in the show notes, you can head out to the podcastreport.com27. Somebody was saying, oh, what we really need is an Android way to be able to consume podcasts. That's not going to do it. There are going to be these big announcements, but they're going to have minimal results because they're just going to make it easier for those of us who already have an audience, for our existing audience to consume our content. Yes, there will be some stumbled across stuff, but realize there's a whole bunch of bunch of podcasts out there. There's a whole lot of content out there. Now, I've been involved with a little experiment and it's kind of interesting because on a certain level, it might seem like the flip of what I'm saying here. But basically I've been doing a podcast, it's a video podcast. And I've been doing the podcast simultaneously to YouTube and I've been doing the podcast as a video podcast inside of itunes. What's interesting is some of the episodes are getting as much as 20 times, 20 times as many views inside of itunes as they are inside of YouTube. Well, Paul, aren't you the YouTube guy? Isn't YouTube the 800 pound gorilla? Well, yes, YouTube is a great place to find a lot of video, but that's just the point. YouTube is a great place to find a lot of video. And there's a lot of competition. There's a lot more competition for video inside of YouTube than there is for itunes. So when people are searching for my term inside of itunes, I show up high. Though people are searching for my term inside of YouTube, I don't rank as well. There's a lot of content out there. YouTube. I can't remember their most recent stat, but it went up. It's just hundreds and hundreds of hours every minute to YouTube podcasters. These podcast in boxes are going to pop up more and more podcasts all the time. The platforms are going to get more and more people to go on. The formulas are going to get more and more people to try to dip their toes into it, and then podcasters are going to go, well, the second Spotify turns this on with all their listeners, or Pandora with all their listeners, suddenly I'm going to have it. Well, that's not the case. The big announcements are going to have minimal results. New platforms won't increase your audience. You will. You are the only person who can increase your audience. If something comes out there that makes it easy for you to increase your audience without doing any work, don't worry about it. I promise you, I promise you from the depths of who I am that I will make sure this is part of the podcast report and I report on it and we'll test it, we'll go from there. But the fact of the matter is, yeah, it ain't going to help. You've got to find the audience, you've got to connect with them, you've got to give them the message. When you do that, it's going to do well. Paul, your predictions, they're kind of gloomy. No, actually they're not. They're just what's happening in the space. Because there's 5,000 new seven day a week podcast with the word on Fire in the title. They will be getting some people to listen. They will be spreading the word. They will be telling other people about podcasting and you might be able to help from that when the news stories are written about how podcasting maybe isn't that if we spend this right, if we do this right, we'll do well. Podcast in a box is going to get a lot more people podcasting, get a lot more people considering it and getting a lot more people consuming it. And then these big announcements. It will be easier for people to consume my podcast and to consume my content will be easier for you. So number one, keep building your audience. But number two, and this is huge, focus on the content, not the tech said this a couple episodes impact not clicks, sales not downloads, position not rank. Don't worry about these distractions. In 2015, podcasting is going to have some downs. Podcasting is going to have some ups. It's going to have some highs, it's going to have some lows. But if you continue to work on your audience and to continue to work on building it, you will do better. We're at a good place in podcasting and we can go further here despite the inevitable hiccups we're going to see in 2015. Love your thoughts on today's topic. I am at Twitter @podcastrpt. Go ahead and follow that up if you'd like. Also at Facebook, the the Podcast Report. I will have this episode and a player over atthepodcast Report.com 27. Feel free to comment away. If you'd like to get a transcript of today's episode and the mind map that I use to follow it. You can go ahead and text ep2.7 as an episode 27 to show hotline at 503-897-1290. You can also use that phone number if you'd like to leave a voicemail message for the show. The three links I'll put up at the podcastreport.com 27 the link to the how to Podcast book, the link to how you can be in the book. And of course I spoke earlier of the Podcasters roundtable that I was on today. I will have a link to that as well. The next episode is Episode well, it's not coming out until January 13th. I'm going to take a couple of weeks off as we work more on the book and we just take off Christmas break. I hope you are able to get some respite, get some rest, have some time with friends and family. The next one will be on the 13th. I'm sure things will happen. I actually know of one really interesting podcast announcement that will come out between now and then. Might chat about that. I'm not going to predict what's going to be on that episode. We'll see what happens. I'll probably record it the morning of the 12th. I got no viewer voicemail for you, but I would love to have you subscribe. This is the podcast report@the podcastreport.com iTunes or Stitcher or Pocket Cast or Slash, Tunein or Spreaker or Overcast. I'd love to have you subscribe. I'd love to have you get this show on a regular basis. The email address is the podcastreportoutlook.com if you'd love to give me a review, I'd take it. ThePodcastReport.com iTunes or Stitcher is the best place to do that. Thank you so much. Talk to you soon. See you next year. Bye.