What Podcast Technology Should You Depend On? - The Podcast Industry Report With Paul Colligan Episode #108

If your podcast requires anything, you've forgotten the power of the podcast. This is the Podcast industry report, episode 108, show notes, links, conversation and more. The podcastreport.com 1 08. When you make a podcast about the tech, you've forgotten the power of the podcast. My name is Paul Calligan, podcaster. Obviously you're listening to my show. This is a show where I show the podcaster how to reach more with your message, profit more from your content, understand the industry that you're playing in. Been a big fan of the industry. I've been in the industry for over a decade. I've got some books out there about the industry and for my day job, I run a boutique podcasting consultancy for this industry. I love podcasting and I know, as do you, that understanding the industry is going to help us do better in this space. So I want to chat about this idea, about the power of podcasting and that sometimes it gets forgotten. And this particular episode comes from a video. I'll link to it in the show notes. It's the podcastreport.com108 one of my fans made this video about how cool it was that he could search for the podcast report and he could click play right inside of Google. Exciting. Cool. This is the type of forward thinking tech that we need. This is the type of forward thinking tech that we want. But the problem is Google. The problem is, is that Google does this only in Android. Google does this only on their headset system. And I guess it probably works in the, in the tablets as well. But if I search the podcast industry report on, on Google, on my iPhone, it doesn't work. If I focus it on, you know, my Amazon Kindle Fire, it doesn't work. And so we have this thing that is, is cool, but unfortunately it's such a small part of the podcasting space that I can't really use it, I can't really leverage it, I can't really do anything with it. Therefore it kind of gets in the way. And see, the problem is Google, as cool as they are and as smart as they are, and as much as they're doing, and I have great and tremendous respect for the company. But here's the problem. They're not getting podcasting, their whole infrastructure, their whole podcast support, which could have been tremendous, could have been amazing, could have been the type of thing that brought podcasting out to the other billions of people that are going to be hooking up to the Internet in the next couple of years. They basically just made something that was Only worth putting on their phone. And the whole, I don't want to get into the iPod, iOS Android, Holy War, if you will. But the fact of the matter is, the majority of my listeners, majority of your listeners, the majority of podcast listeners, are coming on iOS devices. So therefore something that doesn't work on them doesn't matter. But on a larger scheme, and a more important scheme is podcasting is full of things that only work in certain places. And they're getting press and they're getting attention, and we got to get around that. We got to think past that. A couple episodes, I chatted about the Bumpers app, this really cool app that lets you record audio and lets people listen to it and play it back and that kind of thing. But it's in this closed infrastructure of this single app that lives by itself. No way to publish it out, no way to do things. And then what's funny, even though the company maybe didn't call it podcasting as much at the beginning, although they do on the website now, it was the industry that took this idea that recorded audio that you play back on your phone as a podcast, and they kind of stuck with it and run with it. So we have a cool thing for Google that only works on Android phones. We have a cool thing for Bumpers that only works on people who have this app. The Internet is full. Podcasting is full of these cool things that only work on certain elements. And that's not the power of podcasting. You see, if you're not going to fully embrace the power of podcasting, you might as well embrace another platform. The power of podcasting is in how it all comes together and how it all works. Works together in how we can make the stuff that works anywhere. I'm a Big Mac guy in front of me. Big guy, Big Mac guy, Big Mac guy in front of me. My Mac Power Mac. Yay. I think that's what it's called, right? Power. Yeah, whatever. I've got my iPhone next to me. I've got an air next to me. I can see an iPad across the room. You know, I'm a Big Apple guy, but the fact of the matter is, my buddy with the Android phone who listens to this show gets my podcast, the guy who made the video. And again, I'll show the link@the podcastreport.com 108 he uses Android. There are people who are on platforms completely independent of mine. I hear rumors that 8 or 9 of the total of all the Windows Phones are actually listening to my show as well. And it's not just an issue of Android vs. IOS vs. Microsoft vs. BlackBerry. It's an issue of my friends in Teslas who are able to say to have Tesla play the latest episode of a podcast, or there's that device from Amazon, A L E X A. I don't want to say it out loud because I've got one in the room and it'll start talking back to me if I say the name out loud. Those play podcast as well. And my mom with her Kindle Fire and her what is that station called? IHeartRadio app, can play my podcast. See, I've made a podcast. I'm making a podcast that, although very Mac centric in production, is ubiquitous and is everywhere. And that's the power of it. I mean, imagine if you heard of a podcast that you could only listen to on the iPhone 7, you'd laugh. Or a podcast that you know you can only listen to with this piece of software. Well, you'd laugh. But the fact of the matter is there are other people doing it. And once you take podcasting and you say, well, it's all the benefits of podcasting, but only works here, you're really forgetting, you're really losing. You're really ripping yourself off about the power of podcasting. And I think this is huge. We need to think of an industry as an industry of the ubiquity of podcasting. The fact that podcasting is everywhere. I've chatted in the past about how we don't need to fix podcasting. Those who've come on and said podcasting would be better if podcasting would be better if podcasting would be better if we've got a huge, massive distribution and communication platform that any person, anytime, any place, anywhere can consume with without paying license to anyone. Now, if they want to buy a fancy client, great. If they want to buy a fancy phone, great. But they don't have to. That's the key to it, and that's the power to this. So why do I ramble? Well, why did I focus a whole podcast on this? Why do I ramble? That's a whole other question. But why the focus of this on the podcast? Here's the thing. If you're not embracing the full power of the podcast, there are probably better technologies for you. I know a number of podcasters who. The majority of the people who consume, they send people to the website, and they have to send people to the website every week because there's no way to remind them that a new episode's out and they do all the social media and they do the email and they do all these things and they send people to a pull type of mechanism asking the people that they take action every time they want audio, when what they could do is tell them to subscribe, subscribe to the show. If you haven't subscribed to the show yet, subscribe to the show. Go to the podcastreport.com iTunes or the podcastreport.com Stitcher or thepodcastreport.com Google. I don't care if you listen on Google. I'm just not going to tell you any Google specific thing is the only way to consume this stuff. But what you want to do with podcasting is you want to make sure that it's everywhere. You want to make sure that anybody on any device has the ability to consume this stuff doing something that limits it stop five, six years ago, the slideshows inside of itunes because of the ipods and that kind of thing. Well, actually it's longer than eight years ago, if you will. The idea that you could do a slideshow inside of your itunes, podcast using your video, ipod or that type of thing was just kind of silly. So few people used it, people produced for it. It was a bad place. You want to stop that. You want to realize that the power of this is the ubiquitous nature. You want to realize that the power of this is that you can reach everyone and you want to build to that. What do you do with the simple if you're not embracing the full power of the podcast, start embracing the full power of the podcast. If, and I do mean this, if your distribution paradigm, if there is something inside you as an organization, you as a person, you as a podcast or as a show that you wants to require, that needs to require for whatever reason, something specific, some piece of tech or something that basically limits the amount of people who listen, podcasting might not be the best tech for you. There are some limiting features of podcasting. We make up for it with our ubiquity, but you take away the ubiquity and then it's just a 12 year old technology invented by an ex VJ from MTV. When you take everything it is and everything that it has to offer, then it's something very, very, very cool. Again, if you're doing anything with your podcast that can't be consumed by everyone, if you're marketing anything about your podcast that can't be consumed by anyone, if you got to focus attention on your podcast that can't be consumed by everyone, get out or Maybe get a better technology to do what it is that you're doing. Some thoughts. Season three of the Podcast Industry Report we named changed the name to the Podcast Industry Report. I promise we're going to be going a bit deeper on some industry players. Believe me, my bid on Google is not done here. We'll hit some industry players, we'll hit some industry events, we'll do some other things. We've got links to this episode. If you head out to the podcastreport.com108 you can get a link to the video that I mentioned, my books. I'm also going to be doing a panel on podcast monetization at the big Social Media Marketing World Conference that is so far away that I'm gonna put the links into today's episode. I normally don't do that. I like to make these things a bit evergreen, if you will. But this is gonna be around for so long and this thing is so far in advance, it's gonna be pretty cool. I've got Rob Walch from Libsyn on the panel. I've got John Lee Dumas on the panel. I've got Gary Leland on the panel. It's gonna be pretty fabulous. I've got a link to that as well. If you're gonna be at the event and you pick up your ticket through my link, let me know. I can take some of that affiliate money and we can maybe grab a lunch or dinner or something like that. I've also got links to the two apps. Interact with me socially. I love it. ThePodcastReport.com Facebook, ThePodcastReport.com Twitter or just head out to ThePodcastReport.com 108 and leave a comment. Let's interact. I mentioned earlier, subscribe to podcastreport.com, pick the podcasting client of your choice. Tunein, Stitcher, itunes, whatever it is, subscribe to the show. So the next episode comes out, you get it automatically. You don't have to get an email from me. You don't have to be monitoring social to see what I say next, the social stream. You can just get the show, which is the purpose of the show. And I'm done with the show because I want you to get working on your show. So that's it. Paul out. Talk soon.