Last week I looked at podcasting from the point of view of the average hobby podcaster. I was thinking back on the patterns I’ve seen while conducting a number of interviews with podcasters. They all had some expertise that they were passionate about, and all seemed to have the attitude that they just loved doing it and had no intention of stopping any time soon.

I drew the conclusion that podcasters think of what they do as art, and they just love doing it regardless of whether or not money ever finds them. This isn’t the whole story though.

There are more and more organizations popping up that are trying to incorporate podcasting into their communications strategy. These are often times information rich organizations like newspapers, research companies, science organizations, etc. It’s not the case, in these situations, that the host of the show has decided to podcast. In this situation, someone has been assigned to come up with a podcast strategy and produce the shows, using the in house talent and expertise as voices and sources. In some cases the podcasts that are being released were recorded for some other medium and simply pulled out of the archive and repurposed.

I talk to these kinds of podcasters too, and I still find they have the same profile as the hobby podcasters. They have expertise and are passionate about it, and have no intention of stopping. They are not being produced purely because they make money, in fact they usually don’t make money and sometimes the organizations producing them don’t even track their subscriber numbers. But these kinds of podcasts are more of an early stage “experiment” than a genuine and artistic means of expression for an expert.

So regardless of whether podcasters are motivated by the “art” or by the “experimental factor,” it still doesn’t seem that many people or organizations are doing it with the expectation that it is going to turn a profit. Podcasters, professional or hobbiest, are doing it because it’s fun and exciting, and that’s one reason we all love tuning in.

Tags: professional podcasters

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 12th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Random Postings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.