Keeping Your Podcast Distraction-Free

Sometimes the advancements we see in podcasting look pretty small compared to the hype we see and hear about in other forms of media. Would you be better jumping ship to try the Next Big Thing?

Hello, and welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra.

I love a good distraction, a meander, a cool new thing related to podcasting, or not, that I can spin a few cycles on. For me, it helps keep my brain from gunking up or getting stuck in a rut. Being on the bleeding edge keeps me energized really. Knowing that people turn to me for the "What's next?" I mean, that's, that's pretty cool. I'm not going to lie.

And there are also tangible benefits from tinkering with the next new thing as soon as you can, like, you know, early movers status. It's also difficult to predict what's going to be, and what's not going to be, a hit.

So I, personally, I tend to dabble in those new trends, if only for a short while, to see how they can further my own creativity as a podcaster. So, yes, I clearly love distractions and I think it's healthy for podcasters to explore new tools, technologies, and other nifty things that live on the periphery of podcasting.

But don't get too distracted. Don't forget that what you're here for is podcasting. Don't get so distracted that you start to spend more time with that thing on the periphery than you are spending with your podcast.

Now, a quick caveat for a moment here, not everyone who starts out as a podcaster stays a podcaster. There are many podcasters who, after engaging in a distraction on the edge of podcasting, have made a complete shift to what was a distraction and now it is their full-time creative endeavor.

I know podcasters who've become successful writers. I know podcasters who've become successful YouTubers and Instagrammers. I know podcasters who've launched new products initially aimed at podcasting, but then they found greater success in a different industry and have pivoted totally.

With that aside, keep in mind that podcasting is rather resilient and many of podcasting's purported disruptors have either fizzled out or remain not much more than a curiosity. And many new ones are poised to do just that.

We're going to go through a few of these. Remember enhanced podcasting from back in 2006? Yeah, for the uninitiated, enhanced podcasting were, well, podcasts that had images added to the audio of an episode. If the listener was listening on a device that supported them and the podcaster had added the images to the audio file, a sort of slideshow with audio would be the result.

Then of course, not surprisingly, that fizzled out, but it didn't die. I mean, today there are probably a dozen or so apps building on the idea, now adding video clips and polls and links and other outside things to the podcast into the enhanced version. It's a very cool idea, no doubt. And I'll even concede that there are some features in there that might make some podcast episodes more enjoyable.

But enhanced podcasting, or whatever the developer's marketing team is calling it, it has thus far failed to become the dominant way podcasts are created or consumed. And while I never like to say never, it's never going to happen.

I mean, the fact that listeners don't have to watch or engage with their device as they enjoy the content is one of podcasting's strongest features. Removing that effectively removes a leg on a chair. Things get wobbly.

So, if you want to explore enhanced podcasting or whatever it is called today, sure. Have fun. Heck, you might even have an excellent use case that your audience may really appreciate when you do it. But that's always going to be an exception rather than a rule.

And then there was the pivot to video. That has always been reported to be the next thing to replace podcasting. Just a quick trivia piece here, podcasting predates YouTube. And a quick fact, YouTube grew way, way faster than podcasting and rolled out viable monetization options right away. I mean, hell it became and remains the second largest search engine as much as that phrase makes me cringe.

So it was no surprise that some podcasters started making video versions of their show way back then. Nor was it a surprise when lots of new services started cropping up to sell services to the podcasters who wanted to get their podcasts in video form, which, of course, led to the never-ending coverage of the eventual pivot to video that I've seen on and off for the last fifteen years.

But that hasn't happened. I mean, sure, we have services like YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok that are there and larger than ever before, larger than podcasting even. Many podcasters create content and/or maintain presences on those platforms. I mean, as I said earlier, I know some podcasters who ditched their podcast in favor of one or more of those platforms. But that's not the norm. And more importantly, the pivot to video didn't happen and likely won't.

Next, let's do social audio or drop in audio, live talk shows, but created, and also listened to exclusively on mobile devices. Now, the timing of social audio was rather fortuitous coinciding with the first wave of the pandemic back in 2020 when the lockdown had many of us craving some human interaction. And social audio apps gave us that.

And we podcasters, already skilled at making engaging audio content, flocked to social apps like mad people, actually. Some of us going so far as to find ways to hook up our studios and actually push the sound into the drop-in social audio apps so that we sounded way better. In fact, some of them have gone so far as to record their entire podcasts on those services. And some are still doing that, I'm sure.

But most aren't. Because producing a live show and producing a podcast are two very different things. And fans of one feel short-changed when a podcaster tries to do them both. But then again, some podcasters have found social audio as a very good way to grow an audience, get feedback from an audience, even extend their concepts that they discuss on their podcast.

But, the predicted migration away from podcasting to social audio never materialized over any of its ongoing iterations. And it likely won't.

Let's talk about virtual reality. Or augmented reality before that. Or sure, today, the Metaverse. None of this is new. I mean, sure, there's new money pouring into it. And yeah, advances in technology have happened, giving us faster processors, smaller components, or whatever else is necessary to make Second Life Part II a thing.

And you know what, eventually, maybe it will be a thing. But as much as I'd love to have a heads up display or be able to check out for a few hours on a virtual beach in the tropics, none of that is going to replace podcasting. Not anytime soon.

So yeah, enjoy the bleeding edge, get out there and explore, but don't make such a big bet on any of those distractions that you lose sight of your podcast.

And with that, I shall be back directly with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

Podcast Pontifications is written and narrated by Evo Terra. He's on a mission to make podcasting better. Links to everything mentioned in today's episode are in the notes section of your podcast listening app. A written-to-be-read article based on today's episode is available at podcastpontifications.com where you'll also find a video version and a corrected transcript, both created by Allie Press. Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media. Find out more at Simpler.Media.