Podonomics

Very interesting survey I stumbled upon. HRmarketer.com surveyed Human Resources (HR) managers to ask what influences their decision to buy HR products from suppliers and vendors. They found that:

• 42.9% will ask a peer and 26.1% will use Google or another search engine when searching for suppliers and vendors. Not surprisingly, only 1% of those surveyed use ads or printed material they received from a vendor or supplier.
• More than half of those who buy from suppliers of HR products and services had visited a blog (52%) and 43% have listened to a podcast.

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First, I don’t believe that men are the majority of iTunes users at 63% according to a comScore study. I really don’t. I mean, I use iTunes and the last time I checked, I’m definitely not a man. Voice is too high, face is too clean-shaven, also I’m missing some parts. You get the picture.

It’s true that women are the minority when it comes to producing podcasts. Had the study revealed that, I would’ve been:

“Yup, that’s true.”

I had a devil of a time finding women to interview for my book. There were the popular ones, the well known names, but that’s about 5 women so I had to really dig deep.

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As I continue to interview podcasters for my book Podcasting for Profit, I’m discovering more and more that advertising and sponsorship can work in a podcast (although some do think they’re truly awful). So, it’s not surprising that eMarketer would release a report saying that spending on podcast advertising will reach $400-million by 2011.

While I don’t doubt these numbers, what concerns me is that many companies still don’t understand that advertising in a podcast has to be treated differently from advertising in other media, specifically television and radio.

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Jason Van Orden, author of Promoting Your Podcast and who recommended Podonomics as one of the 7 must-read blogs on podcasting, has been doing a series on his blog exploring Podasting Metrics.

This is a fussy area as there are about 4 ways you can measure your podcasting success. You can look at the number of subscribers to your feed, but that’s different from the number of requests for your feed which is different from the number of downloads of your podcast which is different from the number of times it’s played on your podcast page (if you provide a flash-based player).

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I made a troubling discovery after recording a teleclass using a free conference bridge line today. It appears that each conference bridge service records your interviews or calls at different sample rates which makes a huge impact on audio quality.

The sampling rate is key because it makes the difference between a recording that sounds like a CD or a recording that sounds like AM radio. And when people are listening to your podcast, if you record your welcome message using the equipment in your home studio and then transition to a recording of an interview you did over the phone, it will be noticeable and may ruin the listener experience.

Over the past year, I’ve used 3 different services. Here’s my discoveries.

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Confused by the title of this post? Good. That’s how I feel when I see podcasting mis-defined.

Unfortunately, people are still getting the definition of podcasting wrong. I was on this site reading their review of the recent Pew study on podcasting and I saw this paragraph:

“Podcasts are typically sound files that can be played on personal computers, TiVo Inc.‘s digital recorders and music players such as Apple Computer Inc.‘s iPod. Many are regularly scheduled and automatically delivered, and more recently some have incorporated video.”

As I continued my quest to review the coverage of the Pew podcasting survey, I stumbled upon MSNBC and unfortunately, someone plagarized the other because I found the same lame, silly definition of podcast in their article.

What’s wrong with the definition on MSNBC and copied word for word on the other site (or vice versa)?

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So, Pew has come out with its own podcasting statistics. And why the heck not since everyone is doing it.

The report (download here) states:

1. Some 12% of internet users say they have downloaded a podcast so they can listen to it or view it at a later time.
2. However, just 1% report downloading a podcast on a typical day.
3. Men are more likely than women to report podcast downloading (15% compared to 8%)
4. And those who have used the internet for six or more years are twice as likely as those who have been online three years or less to have downloaded a podcast (13% vs. 6%)
5. 972 adult Internet users were surveyed over the phone (not a far cry from the 928 Canadians who took the Canadian Podcast Listeners Survey online back in May of this year)

Unbeknownst to me, Pew released a similar study back in April, but somehow, I missed it. What’s interesting to me is the weird contradiction between points #1 and #2 above. So, I went to their website to find out more.
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Yes, this is a podcasting blog and yes, I’ve focused alot on social media this week, but trust me, it all comes full circle. Here are some additional news items that caught my eye this week.

• One in 3 Canadians read a blog. Not just that, but baby boomers are spending time on them as well. My only gripe is that the article called blogs “web diaries.” Please, please don’t call them online diaries. Doing so removes the seriousness as to why businesses should consider blogs as a communications tool. Use the Wikipedia definition for blogs instead.

• EMI now accepting music submissions from aspiring, unsigned artists. The reason? It’s because the emails of EMI employees are being clogged by attachments that are MB in size. Why don’t you tell us the real reason, EMI? That you’re finally recognizing that social media actually works and that you may just find your next million dollar talent in a sea of no-names. Hope you’re kicking yourself in the foot regarding Napster.

• WOMMA’s Ethics Assessment Tool. By way of For Immediate Release (#185), I found out that the Word of Mouth Marketing Association has developed 20 questions that you can ask contractors, agencies and all personnel to identify, avoid and eliminate unethical word of mouth tactics. This is definitely needed in light of the Walmart and lonelygirl15 fiascos.

By way of Podcasting Scout, I found out about some podcasting statistics that I missed. Here’s a quick summary.

• According to Nielsen, only 42% of Britains know what podcasting is. That’s lower than what Canadians reported in the Canadian Podcast Listeners Survey. Seventy-seven percent of Canadian respondents were somewhat or very familiar with the word podcasting.
• According to Edison Media Research, those between 18-24 years old are listening to 24% less radio today compared to the same age bracket 10-years ago. In Canada, there’s a similiar decline in radio listeningship amongst Canadian adults according to a report released by Statistics Canada.
• According to some digging around by the person who updates the blog over at Typical Mac User Podcast (what’s your name?), there are now 82,978 podcasts listed in iTunes, a ten fold increase in just 12-months. Compare that to the 25,883 in PodcastAlley and the 10,771 listed in PodcastPickle and you can see why iTunes is the Google of podcast directories.

(**sigh**) I found out by way of these comments posted by Brian of commandN that Canada’s favourite podcast isn’t Canadian afterall.

Although This Week In Tech (TWIT) has some connection to Canada, it’s fully produced on American soil. By way of my colleague Dave, Amber (who hosts a podcast in the TWIT family called Inside the Net) confirmed that it is indeed American.

Woe is me, I made a mistake. I mean, something so well produced has to be Canadian, right?

Not in this case.

So, as quickly as you could say Web 2.0, the PDF was updated and a note was added to the download site explaining the change.

Slap me on the wrist. Roast me over coals. To all my fellow Canucks, TWIT is indeed American.

Lesson learned?

1. Just because it projects like a Canuck, sounds like a Canuck and smells like a Canuck, it ain’t necessarily one.

Note to self - Don’t write and watch the dishy Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean at the same time. There’s way too much distraction.

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