Dads-to-be Podcast

The Dads-to-be Podcast offers tips and advice for soon-to-be fathers. The goal is to help future dads help their partners through pregnancy and prepare for the baby’s arrival.

Show details

Audience: Dads-to-be, future parents

Genre: Educational

Frequency of publication: Every other week — This schedule will draw more subscribers. It is also a feasible schedule based on the shorter nature of the episodes.

Time (range): Four to six minutes — This range provides enough information so as to offer enough substance without overwhelming listeners with too much advice.

Tempo: Upbeat tempo. Need to move quickly maintain interest and add substance to short episodes.

Music: Intro, created by me using GarageBand samples.

Future content: I would consider creating a “season” that offers advice based on the month of pregnancy the mother is in. At the end of the nine month season, I would follow up with more episodes centering on specific topics (e.g., a whole episode on circumcision or epidurals).

Distribution: The podcast will have its own blog. It will also be available on iTunes and other directories. This podcast, episode 2, is currently available at www.archive.org and Odeo.

Podcast: Episode 2

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

 

The Next Step for Podcasting: Mobile Video

One of the key insights I’ve learned from our COM597 class is that while the podcast audience is growing, it’s a slow growth. Podcasting hasn’t seen the meteoric rise of other new media tools like blogging or social networking sites. Yet even without a mass audience, podcasting can be just as effective for building a strong — and even passionate — fan base.

One way to increase your audience is to consider a video version of your podcast. If Robert Scoble’s evidence of the power of video blogging is any indication, video podcasts will increase links to your site, and improve listener/viewer rates.

I believe the next big boost for podcasting will be the migration of video to the mobile space. I know, you’re thinking, “Hold on, we’ve been able to upload video podcasts to our ipods for awhile now. That’s nothing new.” True, but most of us still depend on our desktop to update podcasts for our phones or ipods. iTunes for iphone currently doesn’t offer any tools for managing podcasts — users are still tethered to their computers to do this.

Thankfully, smart third-party clients are filling the void. Flytunes recently added video podcasts such as The Anderson Coopers 360 Daily Podcast to its services, and Podcast Pickle has customized its directory of hundreds of video podcasts for mobile devices. With these new services, we can catch the latest podcast updates, manage playlists, and even write reviews directly from our handhelds.

In the next few years, as mobile video continues to improve from a novelty to a high quality, empowering feature, video podcasts should see a surge and garner a much wider audience.

 

Audio Quality Can Make or Break Your Podcast

Several weeks ago the PiB class was discussing the critical elements that make a successful podcast, and someone commented that “Content is everything. Audio quality doesn’t matter if the content is great.” I’m don’t necessarily agree. Poor audio quality can turn a great podcast into a great podcast that no one can bear listening to. And if you’re a company that’s publishing podcasts that sound bad, you could even hurt your brand.

For example, I’m a follower of the popular blog Read Write Web. Read Write Web (RWW) is ranked among Technorati’s Top 10 blogs in the world, and is widely respected among the tech crowd. This past week, RWW announced RWW Live, a new podcast covering news from the previous week. On first listen, I was surprised at the poor quality of the audio. Granted, the conversation — a roundtable made up of four people — was happening remotely between individuals. But I’ve heard plenty of podcast interviews performed remotely that sounded much better than this. At one point the show host had to ask one of the speaker to repeat himself because the audio was so garbled.

I’m sure RWW Live will improve — it’s only their first podcast after all. But I am still surprised that RWW didn’t do more up-front preparation to create a better sound. It’s one thing to hear this from an amateur podcaster, but another thing to hear it from an established, top-notch publisher.

 

Blog Analysis: Coppyblogger

Copyblogger

• Follows a traditional blog format, e.g., posts are organized chronologically with newest at top.
• Page readability is quite good. There is good use of separation between the three columns on the page, and longer posts provide jumps so readers can easily scan a handful of recent posts on the main page.
• A “subscribe” announcement and RSS logo are prominent in the top left. Easy to find!
• Search function is hard to find (far down the page in the right column). There is an “give us an email” entry where one would expect a search feature.
• Ads almost clutter the right column, but they do not become overwhelming.
• Many posts include photos. Helps add some spice to sometimes dry material.
• Helpful categories: resources and popular articles make the blog a more helpful resource.

 

A New Kind of Marketer

Our group discussion (Jonathan, XiaoYe, Matt, Nate) of Mitch Joel’s article led to us describing the characteristics of the “new” marketer.

First, the marketer spends more time listening than talking. In a time when consumers are more savvy shoppers and have a platform to share opinions on products, marketers need to keep an ear to the ground at all times. There needs to be a conversation between seller/consumer — marketers can’t simply tell us what to buy anymore.

Second, the job of marketer also needs the title “community manager” under their job description. In our group discussion, we talked about the example of @comcastcares on Twitter. Marketers need to be quick to address complaints before they spread virally.

 

Two Great Business Blogs on Adopting Social Media

I’m was introduced to two helpful blogs this week, both aimed at using new social media in your business. Okay, so they’re not directly about podcasting, but podcasting is a piece of the whole Web 2.0 sh’bang.

The Groundswell blog, written by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, offers up pieces of their new book of the same name. A good blog for insight into where social media is going (and how you can profit from it). Some of the posts are book promotion stuff, but there’s some great advice as well.

ConversationsMatter calls itself “A Collaborative Social Media Blog.” Its a brand new blog, written by a hanful of in-house marketers looking at harnessing social media, whether internally or externally. It’s real “in the trenches” blogging — definitely worth checking out.

 

The Realities of Building a Following

In this week’s reading, The Business Pocasting Book offered some advice that struck a chord with with me. I wanted to copy pages in the section “Setting Realistic Goals and Measurements” and send them to my boss. Cangialosi writes that “you should not expect an explosion of activity with record-breaking numbers of downloads. It will take time for your podcast to gain any critical mass and for a solid subscriber base to form.” It’s important to recognize that the benefits that result from implementing social media applications aren’t apparent overnight, and they’re not always easy to recognize.

In publishing, we’re continually told that “content is king,” and if the product is of good quality, you will win and keep subscribers. But subscribers don’t necessarily convert into faithful citizens of an online community — those who listen to every podcast or comment regularly on blogs. Unless you have a built-in base like NPR, you’re not going to see a return on your podcast right away.

My company had introduced a blog not too long ago, and saw little response from viewers in the first two months. The blog was soon neglected, as the perception was that no one cared (even though poor visibility was likely the culprit). My fear is that a podcast series will get the axe as well if we don’t see an immediate response That is why it’s so important to set realistic expectations from the start, and have some well-defined expectations of success.

 

Blog and Podcast Summaries

Podcasts

Grammar Girl’s Quick & Dirty Tips for Better Writing provides short, helpful advice for improving grammar in your writing. Each week, Grammar Girl answers listener questions and weighs in on some of the more contested grammar questions.

Diggnation is a weekly podcast featuring popular news stories as voted on by users of Digg, a social-bookmarking Website. Digg founder Kevin Rose and TV personality Alex Albrecht serve as co-hosts of the show. Diggnation is offered in both video and audio-only formats.

Blogs

Copyblogger focuses on improving your company’s visibility online through better copywriting.

Podcasting News offers a daily roundup of podcast-related news. Blog posts cover the latest in podcast technology, podcasting events, and other interesting podcast-related information.

 

What Trends Can You Find In Your Favorite Podcasts?

I took stock of the podcasts I subscribe to (15 total), and noticed a few trends:

1. Nine of the podcasts use the roundtable style format or something similar (e.g., multiple hosts). Even some news podcasts, such as NPR’s Bryant Park Project, involve a handful of regular reporters who are given time to chat back and forth, adding banter to the podcast. I recognize that the roundtable format outlined in TBPB does not work for every genre or scenario, but there are some characteristics of this format that are worth considering. First, the multiple host format lends to a more loose, conversational style. This is much easier to listen to than the typically stiff delivery when one person hosts the podcast. Second, because this format lends to a conversational style, listeners get to know the hosts and their relationships with each other. The lends to the “sitcom” effect: listeners will come back to listen to podcast personalities they like, even if they might have little interest in the topic discussed that week.
2. Most of these podcasts solicit input from listeners, and they respond on the podcast. Of the podcasts that don’t do this, almost all are transferred from TV or radio (e.g., NPR, ESPN). This is a great community-building tool, not only for your podcast but for your product/business.
3. Almost all of the podcasts I subscribe to involve humor, to some degree. Even the Grammar Girl host, who reads the entirety of each podcast, adds subtle humor into her examples of good and poor grammar. She doesn’t have a natural radio voice or great delivery, so these extra touches of humor (and a well-written script) make the final product worth listening to.

 

Thoughts on Editing Podcasts

In a self-evaluation of my first podcast, I made the following observations:

• It seems like managing fewer simultaneous tracks is better. For example. I began by creating the intro music, saving it as an mp3, then importing the mp3 into my podcast. It seems like a tidier process that way, and it’s all set if I were to use it for future podcasts. Plus, my laptop struggles when too many tracks are played in GarageBand.

• I have yet to decide which is better: constantly editing during the recording, or blabbing on and allowing for 5-second pauses after mistakes, then editing everything afterwards. Vaun mentioned that he edited in the middle of recording, and I edited during my first podcast, but I wonder if this constant editing disrupts my focus and the flow of conversation.

• In my “how to” style podcast, I think I started out with enthusiasm but fell into a dull, monotone voice shortly after. It’s important to keep a lively tone or listeners will lose interest.

• It’s hard hearing your own voice. I cringe whenever I hear myself talk. Need to get over this!

• I started the podcast with music running in the background, but it jumped in volume when I’d stop talking. I ditched the music for the first podcast, but I need to play around to fix this issue.