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I wanted to quickly talk about some podcasting predictions that I have for 2014. and 2015. I also wanted to talk about some other things that I see in podcasting moving forward into 2014. and then as well into 2015. I’ve just written down some trends that I think are going to happen.
#1 Increase In Podcast Listenership
The first trend is an increase in podcast listeners. That’s your overall market that are now listening to podcasts. Now with their iPhones and now with Stitcher or Androids where a lot more people now have access to podcast, and not just access to podcast that they download and listen to after they downloaded, but podcast that you can stream.
Because Internet has gotten so much better people are streaming podcasts on the ‘go’, they’re not necessarily downloading at home before they go to work. This is just increase access dramatically and so the easier access becomes the more people are bound to use it.
Not only that, but cars are now starting to sign deals with places like Stitcher or through iTunes so that automatically having these podcasts put into the car itself and you can download podcast directly in your car.
So that easier they make it, the more people are going to do it. So I believe that we’re going to see the overall market size increase in 2014. and then again in 2015. as it just becomes easier and easier to get access to these for every single person.
#2 Changing Consumer Behavior
Number two is that we’re going to see changing consumer behavior around podcasting and this is going to change for a few reasons. Firstly because people are getting more used to podcasts and how to use them but secondly we’re going to see new developments in companies that are coming out with podcasts versions of things like Pandora where you choose something that you like, maybe it’s internet marketing, and it spits out podcast for you and not necessarily all from the one person.
So because of this changing consumer behavior people aren’t unnecessarily just listening to one podcast and subscribing to that and people on missing to just one a week that are listening to multiple every single day and so we will see this changing consumer behavior where people are consuming more podcasts and more variety of podcasts and they getting more specific on the content that they want.
#3 Less Weekly And More Daily Podcasts
Trend number three is that I see is changing, a lot of the podcast will be changing from weekly podcast making way for daily podcast or even multiple times per day which I will talk about as the fourth trend.
But podcasting is now changing from something that people do on a weekly basis to something that people do on a daily basis and I know from my experience as a pharmaceutical rep I would listen to multiple podcast per day as I was driving between seeing the accounts that I had to see for that day.
A lot of people have launched weekly podcast because it’s a way to extend their brand. I believe they’ll find success and they’ll find even more success by doing daily podcasts.
At the moment it seems like iTunes is actually favoring daily podcast because they’re looking at how many downloads have been in the last 24 hours and so therefore daily podcast is consistently showing up higher in the search rankings and some people catch on to that and people start doing daily podcast.
#4 Move To Multiple Times Per Day Podcasting
Trend number four which we haven’t really seen any of at all is a move to multiple times per day. At the moment people are trading podcasting like the internet before Google.
They’re trading at like something where people come to their website everyday or they come once a week and they are saying ‘well consumers only want a certain amount of information’ but I believe that consumers will become more picky in information that they get.
The search tools like iTunes will become more sophisticated so rather than me going and subscribing to a podcast I’ll be able to use iTunes like I use Google to be able to find the podcast that I want and so then for that specific question or specific inquiry that I have.
I believe that people will move to multiple times a day but certainly something that all I want to do because eventually, and it may not happen for 12 months or 24 months, is that iTunes or whoever comes as the major player will turn into a search engine for podcast and so multiple times per day is going to win over because there is more content to be found because people aren’t necessarily subscribing listening to everything. They are just choosing the episodes that they want to listen to.
#5 The Rise Of The Podcast Search Engine
Trend number five is what I’ve already been talking about which is a podcast search engine. This is something if I had the coating ability or if I had the plot now and I had the guts to go out and do it then I would go out and I would create a podcast search engine based on being able to convert podcast into written text so using something like Siri or some sort of voice conversion thing.
So we could convert it into text, people could search for it and would actually direct them to the exact point in the podcast where they would be able to listen to. So this podcast search engine I believe is probably more like 12 or 24 months away because I just believe the computer power and the cost of converting the world’s podcast, I think is over two hundred thousand of them into text is just too expensive at the moment but as that becomes cheaper and it’s going to become more profitable to have these podcasts search engines.
It’s going to be easier to add in advertisement podcast so you’re searching on you need some internet marketing help and so then someone’s going to pay to have an ad which is just that podcast which might be three or five minutes long whatever which answers your inquiry just like Google does it at the moment.
So podcast search engine I think is definitely something that is down the pipeline because it’s something that consumers will be able to use and it’s really up in the air whether Google will tackle this or whether iTunes will become the major player in this or whether someone smaller like Stitcher radio will come up and claim this throne. Things change so much but that’s what I see happening in the future.
#6 A Move To Shorter More Topical Podcasts
Last trend which I’ve just thought at the moment so trend number six is a move to short up podcast focused on one specific topic. So what we see at the moment is a lot of podcast that are interviews and that range abroad and then a topic that might be talking about that person’s life or their experience.
I believe that people will stop shopping interviews or chopping podcast into specific topics just like they do with blog posts at the moment. So targeting keywords, targeting user enquiries and answering that and answering only that.
So there are the trends that I see for podcasting in 2014. and 2015. I believe that podcasting is extremely important. I’ve seen huge results in what I’m doing and I will continue to do it and continue to put focus on podcasting because I just believe it is such a powerful medium and it hasn’t yet peaked and it’s going to continue to grow.