Category: Podcasting

How is MissionaryTalks.com doing?

I was digging through some podcast websites today that sounded like they might interest me. I was surprised and scared at what I found. Then I started asking myself if Missionary Talks (my main podcast) has the same problems.

The shows I checked out were listed as “religious.” Other than knowing their name and that they should be religious in some way, I knew nothing about the shows. Some I did not even go to because their name told me that I would not be interested (that’s a good thing) or I couldn’t figure out what the show might be about based on their name (that’s a bad thing). As far as a name goes, I think Missionary Talks is a good name for a show. It does not tell you exactly what the show is about, but I think most could figure out that it has something to do with missionaries and that it is conversational or instructional rather than musical.

Missionary TalksWhen I arrived at the websites of the shows that passed the first test I had trouble finding information immediately on the front page that tells about the show. Most had the standard blog post with a few words about the episode and an audio link. But I still had trouble figuring out from the episode posts what the general tone of the podcast was. I did not do this for all the shows, but even clicking through to the standard “about” page left me puzzled about the content of some of them. Is the masthead explanation of Missionary Talks sufficient? Or do I need a little blurb at the top of the sidebar that gives a bit more detail?

None of the sites I looked at gave me any indication as to how long each episode was. I know we, as podcasters, are not bound by a time limit (though I think each one should have a goal), but I could get no feel for how long any of the episodes were without either downloading an episode or starting to play the episode from the website. (This was not always available, nor was the information about episode length always listed on the embedded player.) At Missionary Talks I have the show length stated at the bottom of each post. Does anyone but me care about episode length?

I am curious to get feedback on the impression you get when you go to the Missionary Talks website. I am looking at refreshing the site with some new graphics and maybe a color scheme change. While doing all this I want to make any informational changes that will help potential new listeners become immediately comfortable with navigating the site. Any input is helpful. What bugs you about Missionary Talk? What do you love about it that you think shouldn’t change?

By the way, I didn’t subscribe to any of the podcasts I went to look at. I guess I was too depressed by what I found.

The difference between a podcast and a podcast episode

Over the last week I have been working with Lingq.com to improve my Spanish. Much of the reading I do at their site is transcripts from podcast episodes. You can also play the audio while reading the text. Several of the texts I have read and or listened to were originally podcast episodes.

I have heard a few times at that site something that sounded funny to me. Since then I have also noticed a couple of podcasts I listen to make, what seems to me, the same mistake. They talk about “the podcast” when referring to the individual episode. For example one that I heard today was talking about the particular episode (not the series) and said “here we are at the end of an eclectic podcast.”

To my thinking the podcast is the complete package. You wouldn’t refer to one episode of a TV show as the “series”; it would simply be an episode of that series. It sounds odd to call an individual episode a podcast.

What do you think?

Podcast Survey

I just completed a podcast listener survey. It was generic, but asked the kinds of questions I like to see.

One of the questions that I always hope to see on these surveys, but rarely do has to do with preferred episode length. This survey covered it, though not with as much granularity as I would like. My choices were “less than 10 minutes”, “between 10 and 30 minutes”, and a couple other choices. I think anything less than 20 minutes is perfect. If it takes you 20 minutes to say what you need to say, then make the show that long. If you can say it in 2, then 2 minutes is a perfect length.

I would rather have a podcast come out multiple times a week with 2 hours of content broken into 20 minute chunks than to have any 1 episode be longer than 30 minutes. Leo over at TWiT used to have several shows that he tried to keep to 30 minutes or less. There were some that were allowed to be up to an hour in the early days. Now it seems like he has a goal to make some shows 2 hours. Of course his ads can take 20 minutes to get through.

Grammar Girl, you are my hero in the podcast length department. I just wished the advertisements weren’t 1/4 the show length. You run a great network.

The hard part about this survey were the questions about “your favorite podcast.” I listen to a lot of podcasts that I love. I keep going through my list and trying to cut back to just my favorite ones. That list is still well over 50 podcasts. I decided that for this survey I would answer all the questions in relation to Buzz Out Loud which is arguably one of my favorite podcasts but also one I love to hate.

I have listened to almost every episode of Buzz Out Loud since March 2006. Here are my thoughts to Molly and Jason going forward (Tom is cutting back to part time and will soon be gone).

Can’t you guys get back to the good old days when the shows were chock-full of tech news and lasted only 15 minutes? Now you have 4 tech stories and then rant about how it effects your online game play and who you will vote for in the next election. You also somehow can’t keep your shows under 35 minutes any more. I don’t mind commentary, but you guys irritate me. Yet, somehow I still managed to choose you as the one I called my favorite in my survey answers.

*sigh*

I took a happy survey story and turned it into a Molly Rant.

Missionary Talks 73: Travis Snode

Missionary Talks 73 is an interview with Travis Snode, missionary in Northern Ireland. Travis is a missionary I met through Twitter. I am not sure how we got connected originally, but Monday I was thinking out loud on Twitter about how I have 4 potential interviews in the wings, but no one had confirmed a time to actually record a phone call. I figured I would look through my Twitter followers/followees and see if I had a missionaries I could interview from there. Beings that they are on Twitter I figured they would be the connected type of people who could do an interview quickly.

I found Travis’ name and looked up his website. Come to find out, while I did not know him personally, it seems that we had a lot of mutual friends in the ministry. I sent him a quick email and he replied positively about doing an interview. When we got on Skype together I asked him what he knew about Missionary Talks. Turns out he had never even heard of Missionary Talks previous to my email. That is not unusual for the missionaries I interview, but the fact that he was gung-ho about doing the interview with me made me think he probably was a listener.

We are in the middle of trying to get ready for our move to Argentina while also being involved in a pastor’s conference this week, traveling to a church in Kentucky this weekend and spending most of next week in a mission’s conference in Tennessee. I am trying to do anything I can to distract me from the fact that I should be packing for a major move in 13 days. So, I spent all morning yesterday recording an interview and editing it. Seemed like the responsible thing to do.

As an added bonus to this episode, if you go to the Missionary Talks fan page on Facebook you can listen to a clip of the interview that did not survive the editing process, but was a very interesting section of our conversation. Don’t forget to become a fan if you go there.

Yes, the above linked Twitter account is the account where I say more mature type things as opposed to my other Twitter account which is the real me.

Missionary Talks 72: Andy Shinabery

I posted a new Missionary Talks interview yesterday. After spending an hour with Andy at a local coffee shop, he and I sat down in my mobile recording studio (Honda van) and recorded the interview. Andy and I have kept up with one another casually over the years since we went to college together.

Through email earlier this week we worked out the details for me to call him and record the interview. We were both very surprised when I went to pick up my son from youth meeting on Wednesday and saw Andy standing at the front of the church. Neither one of us had a clue that the other was in town. We enjoyed catching up and sharing some of our conversation with the listeners.

The next episode I put out I hope will be one of the new Missionary Chats formatted show. I will try to alternate these as much as I can, but there may be more Talks than Chats at times, or vice versa.