Sticking With It

I'm one to talk, really.

I refer to the phenomenon of "podfade," the tendency of many, maybe most podcasts to just stop posting after a relatively short time, about which Steve Goldstein has previously written here, and which came to mind when I was writing an item about a new podcast with a premise that sounded a lot like one I'd reported on two years earlier. I went and checked on the older podcast and was surprised to find that the show, launched with great fanfare, had posted four episodes and....

That's it. Four episodes. They made it a whole month before shutting it down. And that show was using existing material -- old interview tapes, edited -- so it's not like they ran out of material. They just ran out of interest.

What's interesting about that to me is that this wasn't a hobby podcast. It was a podcast launched by a fairly large newspaper, with a staff and a mandate to expand the company's mission into podcasting, and someone just lost interest or dropped the ball. How does that happen?

Simple: No passion. If you go into podcasting without being passionate for what you're doing, or even all that interested in what you're putting out, you're going to fade. If your primary motivation is money, or "everyone else is doing it, so we have to," you'll fail. You have to want to do it whether or not it makes money, whether or not anyone's actually listening. I can generally tell (but not always) when a show's doomed; when it comes off as a duty rather than something someone REALLY wants to do, it's going to go away.

So... do you REALLY want to do a podcast? Why? If you can answer that, you'll be more likely to avoid podfade. Remember, you don't HAVE to podcast. You need to WANT to podcast. Otherwise, put your energy into something you DO want to accomplish. You, and listeners, will be better off that way,

(I know, long gaps in time here. I DO have the passion for this, I swear! Just a matter of making the time. STOP SHAKING YOUR HEAD. I'm not a hypocrite, I promise you... Sigh...)

Got a question about podcasting? Go ahead, send it to psimon@allaccess.com or tweet it at @pmsimon. That's what I'm here for.