Welcome to Season 2, Episode 4 of The Jag Show Podcast. The biggest story in the podcast world this week is Apple finally rolling out their new categories. I’m here to tell you what that means to you, but first let me say this. DON’T WORRY and DON’T FREAK OUT.
According to Jacobs Media, 70% of podcast discovery is via social media, word of mouth, or other podcasts. True, some discovery comes from browsing categories, but it’s not that big a slice of the pie. So if you don’t update your categories immediately, or if the new categories aren’t a perfect fit for your show, don’t sweat it. Yes, you want every opportunity to bring in new listeners, and you should make your adjustments sooner rather than later. But you don’t have to drop everything you’re doing right this second and change your categories.
When you are ready to make the changes to your categories, it should take you all of 5 or 10 minutes. Go into your podcast host and your show settings. And simply choose up to three categories that best fit your show. I’ve got a link to a video from Dave Jackson in the notes that shows how to do this in Libsyn and the Blubrry Powerpress plugin. I did this for my clients this morning and had them all finished, and emails sent out before 9am.
The other topic I want to cover today is something once known as TiVo guilt. As DVR’s came to prominence 10 to 15 years ago, all of a sudden television watching changed. DVR’s are much easier to use than a VCR (and they don’t blink 12:00 all day). However, this ease of use meant we started “taping” everything. If a show even looked mildly interesting, we could add it to our queue with only a few button pushes.
A psychological phenomenon was soon developed, known as TiVo guilt, or later DVR guilt. People started becoming stressed out over a mounting backlog of shows to watch. In fact, a quick Google search reveals a CNN article from back in 2008 talking about the stress and guilt of having a seemingly endless backlog of shows that you won’t be able to watch, but can’t bring yourself to delete. I’ve linked to that piece in the show notes.
Well, podcasting has now done for radio and audio what the DVR did for TV. We have an endless amount of content to consume, on demand. According to Edison Research’s infinite dial survey, most podcasts are consumed within 48 hours of download. And topical ones, often related to news or politics, have a limited shelf life. Evergreen ones often fall to the back burner.
For me, I listen to The Daily from the New York Times every morning – or at least within that 48 hour window. If I don’t, the content is no longer timely. I’m also a faithful listener of Pod Save America, which generally comes out twice a week. My political lean is close to that of the hosts, they’ve got great inside knowledge, and I enjoy their personalities. But the problem is, each episode runs around 80 or 90 minutes. That’s a huge time commitment, and I don’t want to fall behind. So I’ve begun listening to that show at 1.5 times speed in my Apple Podcasts app. It’s a little bit rushed, but I can still understand everything, and I now only have to commit an hour to it, usually while I’m in the car. So I’m still consuming it, but a bit rushed.
The podcast that’s most likely to fall victim to my guilt and time crunch is the NBC Sports Boston breakfast pod. I grew up in Boston and still follow the New England teams. This podcast is a 15 minute re-packaging of the best 5 minutes on each team from the previous night’s TV sports talk show.
I work from home, so my time to listen used to be when I would walk my dog in the morning. And lately, my wife has been getting up early to walk the dog with me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to spend some time together at the beginning of the day. But with less time to myself, there’s less podcast consumption time. And with summer being the lightest time of the year for sports, and this year’s Red Sox team struggling, I’ve got less interest in the subject matter. (And no, I’m not complaining – I know it’s been an incredible 20 years for Boston sports, including the fact that the BoSox are the regining World Series Champs.)
But here’s one other factor. The production on this podcast is somewhere between average and below average. The introduction for the show is usually voiced by a producer who doesn’t have much “on air” training. And the transitions between segments are often sloppy because they are trying to overlap the podcast transition music with the bumper music from the TV feed they are pulling from. It’s both frustrating and distracting.
Here’s the moral of the story. As more and more people discover podcasts and shows they like, you’d better make sure your content and your production are top notch. Otherwise, when that podcast library starts to fill up, your show may not make the cut.
As always, thanks for listening to this episode of The Jag Show podcast. You may have noticed we have a new logo. Thanks to Karolyn and Tim at The Promotions Guy in Royal Oak Michigan for creating that for us. I try to keep this show weekly and very short, so that you can consume it quickly and NOT add to your podcast “TiVo Guilt.” If you learned something today, feel free to subscribe to The Jag Show in Apple, Spotify, Google, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, or Stitcher, and until next time….lata!
Mentioned in today’s show:
How To Video for Changing Podcast Categories: