Good News/Bad News For Content Creators

The good news is that your services are relevant, high quality and immediately useful. The bad news is that nobody cares about you or your services.

To the extent that you are the topic of your marketing strategy, (explaining what you do, establishing your credentials, describing your products, distinguishing yourself from the competition etc.) your articulate words are falling on deaf ears. One of the hard lessons of marketing and content creation is that your potential audience/clients want to see themselves in your words, not you.

Do you know what my needs are? Do you understand the issues I’m facing in my field? Can you articulate in one or two sentences what outcomes I am trying to achieve?

Can you put yourself in my shoes and describe the world through my eyes?

Regarding my own web presence, I can tell you that I don’t care one iota about the details of search engine optimization, the nuances distinguishing various social networking strategies, or how many megabytes of free space you’re offering me on your servers. From my perspective, all I want is to build a huge community who in short order become paying and loyal customers for my coaching and consulting services. I want conversation that translates into business, and I want it sooner rather than later.

Thoughts on some recent Podcasting Data

The Pew Internet and American Life Project just released some new data on podcast consumption, estimating that roughly one in five Americans have ever downloaded a podcast:

These numbers are extremely close to the Edison numbers on podcasting and certainly validate that study’s conclusion that podcast consumption continues to grow. This is a good study, and a worthy addition to the growing body of credible research out there on the consumption of downloadable media.

The Pew report does draw one conclusion that is likely to draw comments from a number of podcasters, if not outright controversy. With 3% of Americans indicating that they download podcasts “on a typical day” (and 17% of actual podcast consumers claiming the same), the data suggests, as Mary Madden indicates, that “podcasting has yet to become a fixture in the everyday lives of internet users.” One could point to the “300% increase in the daily podcast audience” here, as the headline reads in today’s Podcasting News, and see the glass half full, or one could focus on the number “3″ and be fairly dismissive of podcasting.

The truth, as it generally is, lies in between, and is best summarized just exactly as Madden has written–podcasting has proliferated, but has yet to become a fixture in daily life. The overall consumption numbers from both the Pew and Edison studies (one in five Americans) show that podcasting is becoming important on a national scale–but it isn’t yet a “daily habit.” I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that podcasters don’t really “ask for the order,” a phenomenon I wrote about at length on this very site in an article entitled “Podcasting: The Curse of Convenience.” Because you can listen to a podcast any old time, there is not necessarily a daily urgency to do so. There aren’t many daily shows, for one thing–and I often wait until the end of the week to even sync my portable MP3 player. “Daily” may not even be a reasonable standard–radio is measured on weekly reach (Edison’s data puts podcasting’s weekly reach between 8 and 9 percent) and television is measured on the “show,” both of which are more reasonable standards for podcasting.

I Want Better Sound…and That’s Vinyl(?)

I mentioned in my New Media Resolutions post at the first of the year that I want to do whatever I can to improve the quality of audio on line and in downloadable media. I was reminded of that “cause” this past Sunday morning by the folks at, well, Sunday Morning. The CBS show presented a piece on how vinyl records are becoming “cutting edge.”

Just as I pointed out in January, the sound of what is being sent into the cloud needs to improve, if for no other reason than to avoid trying to figure out how to cram a “record” into your iPod. Seriously, for those that are my age, it’s unfair for us let those brought up on listening to audio in the mp3 format think that’s the best music can sound. For those that have never heard the sound of a vinyl LP you owe it to yourself to hear all of what the artist labored to put into the music, especially the parts the mp3 format has had to discard.

I know, I know, you’re going to say that the human ear can’t detect the difference between a vinyl album, a CD, MP3, WAV, etc. I’m sorry, I disagree. I hear a difference. And it’s especially noticeable in the MP3 format, the most popular format for portable devices and online streaming. The reason it is the most popular, if you didn’t already know, is that it is the smallest file size. An MP3 file is a fraction of the size of, say, a WAV file. File size is directly related to download time.

So what do we do about better sound quality on “the net?” First, don’t settle. If you can find a way to make that audio sound better then do it. Start with a Variable Bit Rate setting if you can. VBR allows the music to be compressed in places where the full audio spectrum will most likely not be missed, a fade in or out for example. Another option would be, with such advances in bandwidth and more and more access to higher speed connectivity, offer your audio in the WAV format. I’ll take a WAV over MP3 any day.

Whatever the case, I refuse to settle for what we now accept for high-quality audio. I don’t believe going back to vinyl is the answer. Memories of the cracks and pops of an over-played album and the need for the pennies on a tone-arm are enough to keep me away from climbing on that bandwagon.

Why The Apple TV Will Revolutionize Content Consumption

Downloading today’s available update to the Apple TV (aptly named “Take 2″), I can now experience within my living room, the promise that was buzzing about at last month’s MacWorld conference.  That is, the Apple TV may very well revolutionize the way we consume (and track!!) downloadable RSS media.

These are tall words.  You’ve probably heard this story before (the Roomba will revolutionize home cleaning? Pet owners might disagree);  but let me explain the two reasons why:

1. Watching and listening to podcasts is straightforward and simple.   Quick navigation leads to consumption without the prior subscription hassles.  Devices need not sync.  Desktop media management disappears, just sit back, and watch or listen.  The navigation of popular and featured content is a snap.  When (if?) Apple comes out with a qwerty entry device instead of the painful text entry process via the super-simple remote, we might soon easily explore the over 125,000 available subscription points within the podcast directory.

2. A download (finally!!) is a watch.  The untethered nature of prior RSS media consumption has many great benefits, but it also stymies attempts to answer the question:  how can you prove that a download is an actual watch/listen.  In a sense, Apple TV re-tethers RSS.  Developers will investigate whether Apple TV watches are distinguishable in server log so as to aggregate usage in a way that is meaningful to publishers, advertisers and other interested parties.

Is this a fraction of the pie of all RSS media usage?  Today it is a very very small sliver, and likely to grow, but unlikely to amount to the biggest portion of the pie any time soon;  the larger slices will comprise desktop and portable media usage for the foreseeable future.  But the usage data will open up a new revolutionary window into how many people are starting to watch and listen to downloadable media, on the couch.

Audience Evangelists

Last month I had the pleasure of participating in the Mac Podcaster Meet-up at Macworld Expo. We had a great discussion (as Matt was so kind to mention), and one of the points we touched upon was that many of us “long-time” podcasters haven’t seen much subscriber growth in the last 12 to 18 months. We developed our audiences early, and subscriber numbers have basically stayed the same. This means our attrition matches growth almost exactly, and nearly all of us on the panel were seeing it.

A listener wrote me recently with a potential solution: ask your audience to evangelize your show. It’s so simple, really, and I’m surprised more of us aren’t already doing it. We all know that we are creating content in perhaps the most engaging media type ever, and while we’re all busy here trying to figure out how to (properly) use that engagement for advertising dollars, etc., we can also use it to further our reach. If we simply ask our audiences to tell their friends about our shows, even going so far as to explain that you don’t *need* an iPod to view/listen, it could really help. If only 10% of the audience does it, and they each tell two people, and only half of all the people told stick around, that’s a 10% increase in listener/viewership. That’s huge!