Grabbing and holding attention! Visuals and success

Afternoon lords, Julia here. 

My problem with podcasts is that I am an internet consumer with the attention span of a goldfish and the tendency to click through link after link until I end up somewhere completely different having achieved absolutely nothing. Apparently this is a common affliction of the modern internet consumer that media producers work tirelessly to cater to. Although much of the success of the podcasts Jaime posted on our PodCastle come from the personalities themselves, I believe that the rest of the success is grabbing and holding someone’s attention on the website. Personally, I’ve never been one for podcasts, I prefer videos, but in saying that I have never really given them the time of day. So this morning I checked out some of Jaime’s links and found myself drawn in by the quirky pictures accompanying podcasts on Party Truck USA and the teasers for the podcasts on The Bugle and Radiolab. I think making the site of publication visually intriguing would be something to experiment with (obviously after the podcast is made).

Source: http://thebuglepodcast.com/

Source: http://www.partytruckusa.com/

I love Lucy’s handshake idea as a fun cultural oddity to explore in the format of a podcast. I think describing awkward handshakes could be quite funny, however it might not work as the subject matter is so visual. This is the kind of subject that might be also explored through the vodcast or montage/slideshow (anything visual and moving I suppose) to complement the chat about it. 

The success of our podcast (Depending on how we measure success of course):

In my search of what makes a podcast successful I stumbled across this Australian science podcast and according to the website, it was runner up in the National Science Week's Big Blog Theory for best Australian science microblogger. This podcast is small-time compared to some of the others we’ve been looking at. The intro to the website reads “The podcast on science, curiosities and general knowledge. Brains really do matter!” More of a niche market than others but I didn’t click away from the website straight away. The layout works for my attention span. For example, on the summary of podcast 153, the topics covered are written in point form so it’s easy to skim and decide whether the podcast is worth listening to.

Source: http://www.brainsmatter.com/

Also, given the dry (although that’s a matter of opinion) and dense subject matter, the use of background music, slow speech and soothing tone of the presenter, the podcast becomes a bit of easy listening which I thought was interesting. The success of this podcast, other than the comprehensive list of scientific topics covered, lies in the layout. Before I listen I can see what is covered in the summary section. In regards to self promotion and funding the website includes a button on each episode to donate through PayPal, share on social networking sites, and subscribe through iTunes. It also has a merchandise section which is a bit strange and doesn’t seem very necessary. It’d be interesting to know how many people have actually bought a ‘brains matter’ cutting board. So I don’t think merch is on our list of podcast-additions but I really do think the site of publication needs to be interesting to look at and have a practical layout if our feature is also focused on what makes a podcast successful.

So to continue on from Snoop Blog aka Nirupam’s game plan,

•  Step 7: experiment with visuals to grab attention and make the podcast more interesting  

Thanks for stopping by ye olde PodCastle lords!