The Podcast Asylum

What’s a podcast and why should you care?

Before the year ends, would you like to check “learn about podcasting” off your to-do list? About a dozen communicators have already signed up for ‘Professor’ Donna Papacosta’s next free Webinar, Podcasting 101 for Communicators and Marketers, scheduled for 2 p.m. Eastern on December 5. Would you like to join them?

Here’s what one participant said after a recent session:

Thanks for a great webinar! You do a great job of sharing important information while still keeping everyone involved. I’ll be sure to recommend the webinar to anyone I know who’s curious about how podcasting can help their business. –John Watkis

In this 45-minute session, we cover what podcasting is all about; how to find podcasts relevant to your interests; how organizations are using audio for internal and external communications; and how to sell the idea to management.

I like to keep the number of attendees small so that people can ask questions. So if you’re interested, sign up soon! To attend, all you need is a phone and an Internet connection. To register, send an email to trafcom@gmail.com. Did I mention that it’s free?

This phenomenon occurs when a podcast appears to be at odds with itself. If, for example, the host of a podcast appears to have been recorded in a separate session from the guests, the hosts never identify themselves—even with a pseudonym—or the tone of background music and bumpers conflicts with the tone of the show’s content. A show that claims to encourage listener comments but provides no show blog, e-mail address, or comment line also suffers from Podcast Dissonance, though in this case there is a dual diagnosis of Podcastus Inhospitus.

The effect on the listener of these internal inconsistencies ranges from distraction (trying to figure out why things don’t match up) to distrust (wondering whether the guests are actually answering the same questions the host is asking).

Preliminary findings suggest that this syndrome is most common in corporate podcasts, possibly because of the number of different departments that have to sign off on each episode.

Professor Goetsch got together with some of her favorite podcasters at the Podcast and New Media Expo in Ontario, CA, at the end of September, 2007. The photographer is Stefan Didak.