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A very real risk to be avoided, but also acknowledged as something any of us are subject to. Even Mark Jensen of PodSqod admits to feeling the tug of that black hole, and he podcasts nearly every day for a living. Podfading is less about podcasting than it is about human nature.
The usual way of looking at this - the disappearance of a podcast as “real life” intervenes - does describe the phenomenon, but probably isn’t enough to avoid it, just like “knowing” that being overweight is a matter of eating more calories than you work off generally isn’t enough to help you lose weight.
A modified high school chemistry model may be more useful: you want to get from Point A (no show) to Point B (show done) but there’s this Speed Bump in the way. To get the show done, you need to put more energy ooomph into the front end, decrease the size of the bump, or both; if you don’t, you won’t clear the bump, and the show doesn’t happen. If this occurs often enough, the enthusiasm to reapproach the bump wanes, the bump gets bigger, and the podcast fails, or “fades.”
Today’s show gives concrete suggestions on increasing your front-end enthusiasm and decreasing the amount of resistance you have to overcome. Having a multifactorial approach - diversifying your strategy, so to speak - definitely increases your chances of avoiding podfade, but the show concludes with the practical reminder: better to implement a few good strategies than to speculate on a bunch of great ones.
Special thanks to Jason Van Orden and Tee Morris (check out his “Podcasting For Dummies” podcast, show #14) for their great work on this topic.
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Hmmm. iTunes is posting Tee Morris’ episode 14 instead of my own show - I’ve pinged it after correcting what I think the problem is, but FYI, my show #3 should be forthcoming from iTunes (you can get it directly from this website), I’m NOT stealing Tee’s show, but his episode #14 DOES deal with podfade, you should check out his podcast, anyway
- pb