Podcast As Content Form - Not For All

By: Sorab Ghaswalla

Every 3 years or so comes a new “trend”, or what I call the flavor of the season. Right now, it’s podcast. Everyone’s jumping on the podcast/vodcast (video podcast) bandwagon. As always, the producers hope that it will pay dividends, and quick, thank you.

I don’t see that happening.

As way back as 2005, podcasts were touted as the “most happening thing”. We are in 2019 and podcasting is still getting there. That is the first red flag. No doubt, any new content platform dependent on technology also evolves as technology updates itself, and that holds true for the progress of podcasting.

It’s easy to get carried away with all the hype. Look around you today and you will invariably be greeted with advertisements, newsletters, and of course, podcasts…about podcasts. It’s being touted as “the next big thing” in content.

It’s not. At best, a podcast can be part of your multi-channel marketing effort.

As a standalone channel though, it may not always work. It is not inter-active. Its uni-dimensional format does not allow the creativity of an online video nor its “immersiveness”, or the inter-play of a mobile app. There’s also the danger of a podcast turning into a boring monologue (it’s not always that you can have a guest on the show, right?). It is also labor intensive and more often than not, the RoI is not worth the effort.

The only thing working in its favor? Because it’s a downloadable file, and requires only one of your sensory skills, you can listen to it at your convenience (in my books, a vodcast does not count for its nothing but digital video). Which could be a good tool for marketers for their messaging. Also competing in the same space as podcasts though are prerecorded and streaming music, streaming radio, recorded webinars, and, of course, audio books.

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