Why Podcasting is the Most Exciting Medium Today

So why is podcasting hot right now? People ask me that question. I, of course, have devoted a lot more of my time and resources to audio podcasting. Some of you are watching this on YouTube, some of you are listening to this on my podcast feed. Here's the thing. There's been an explosion of new media options in the last 20 years. Obviously, you can blog, you can create electronic books on Kindle, you can do YouTube videos. Here's my experience that, for example, with YouTube videos, if you're not wildly entertaining, funny, incredibly good looking, it's frankly difficult to build much traction doing a regular show. The other problem is, even if you're connecting with people on YouTube, excuse me, on Google Hangouts or with Skype video, it is hard to interview guests and have the quality come across. And if you're doing guests coming to you, well, then you have the whole infrastructure issue of a full studio and you need to be centrally located in New York City or Los Angeles. There's a tremendous expense to doing high quality video. And yeah, I know you can cut some corners, but that's the problem, frankly, for business people, people who are involved in, in arts, culture, sciences, economics. If you're not pure entertainment, the video thing is hard to do. Blogs, there's so much competition. Yes, some people break through, like Seth Godin, and has millions and millions of people reading his blog every day. But for many people, that's a hard thing to do. The reason I'm excited with podcasting and why I think you see so many newcomers coming into it, people like David Axelrod, former chief strategist to Barack Obama, a lot of famous movie stars, comedians, are getting into podcasting is because it is, in relative terms, so much simpler, easier and cheaper than creating a TV show. It has so many promotional hooks available to it because you can interview people from all over the world and they don't have to come to you, you don't have to come to them. And then you can have your guest promoted, or people who are looking for that guest can find it in a way that if you're just doing your own YouTube videos and it's just you. Again, unless you're wildly entertaining or Justin Bieber, people probably aren't actively seeking out you. They're not actively seeking out me. That's the beauty of podcasting. From a technical standpoint, it is infinitely easier to produce a quality podcast than it is a quality TV show. TV shows, people are spending half a million dollars per episode on a lot of network TV, but for less than $1,000 you can create a quality podcast that certainly doesn't sound any different than what people have been used to listening to or on AM talk radio. And it doesn't take that much more time, effort, money, resources to produce audio as good as anything people hear on National Public Radio or their favorite audiobook from one of the biggest publishers in the world. So that's why I think audio podcasting at the moment is such an interesting sweet spot for people who are looking for ways of reaching a mass audience, communicating with customers, fans, clients, prospects. And it's one reason why I'm devoting more of my time and energy to audio podcasts. I'll still be doing video right here on YouTube, posting the video on Facebook, but I'm frankly most optimistic and I'm going to be devoting a much higher percentage of my resources in terms of time and everything else to to the audio only long form interview because it is a way to reach so far beyond you and your own organization. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. If you have any questions you'd like me to address here on this video or audio podcast, send them to me, TJ@mediatrainingworldwide.com.