1. There is no need to yell

It means listeners are actively deciding to give ‘broadcasters’ their ears. Podcast listeners are hungry, hungrier than any other audience in any other medium that I have ever engaged with. If someone finds a show they like, they usually decide very quickly that they love it and want more shows like it.

For podcasters that means we can all leave the annoying zany morning show radio host persona in the past. If that’s your thing, by all means, some people will love you for it. However, not everybody has to be the loudest to compete anymore. We aren’t winning over people who are stuck in traffic scanning radio stations for the easiest thing they can ignore. People are actively seeking out stuff that they actually like.

Having an audience that is on the hunt means that we need as many different voices as we can get. Be quiet and weird, be loud and opinionated, just don’t be lowest-common-denominator bullshit. We don’t need to play that game here because the way that we engage with our audience is unique. We are lucky to have an active audience and we don’t need to win them over with cheap tricks.

For listeners it means you are actually in complete control over how this ‘industry’ takes shape. This is like calling-in-to-vote-for-your-favourite-American-Idol-contestant on steroids. If you dig a show, if you want it to succeed, you have that power. You are the marketing team for that show. Share it with some people who might also like it, engage with the people that create it, support it financially if you can.

2. Let people be smart

It means podcasting is more akin to reading a book than watching a movie. It is a more participatory activity. My friends who love podcasts are constantly listening, formulating an opinion on what is being said, saving tidbits of interesting information to whip out at the water cooler (and very often laughing at the fact that someone else has thoughts that are as fucked up as their own). You don’t usually get all that from a movie.

When you read a book, you get to imagine the faces & the places. You fill in all the blanks. That encourages creativity, reflection on your own experiences, empathy — it just makes you think. Thinking is good. There are those same opportunities to fill in the blanks in a podcast. It can actively engage your brain rather than pacifying it.

As podcasters, we should always be taking advantage of that. An intelligent being has put us directly in their ears, their brain is right there, how can we stimulate it in unusual ways? How can we make them creatively engage with what we are saying? They are as smart as we are, we just happen to have the microphone right now — how can we better communicate with our audience as intelligent people?

3. We don’t need makeup

It means we can all be a bit unpresentable. I like the phrase, ‘You have a face for radio’. I actually think it is a point of pride that you don’t have to be pretty to be on the radio. (In my experience, pretty people make boring things anyway.)

For me, podcasting takes the face-for-radio thing to a whole new level. Podcast listeners engage with shows in a very intimate way (e.g. listening directly in their earbuds while in their own little world on the subway). That means podcasters get to be people. They don’t need to dress up their faces and they don’t need to dress up their personalities either. Listeners are listening in on a personal level, they’ve made that leap, give them personality, flaws and all.

The best feedback I ever received about my show was when a friend said, “It’s good, but I can tell that you are still acting. Stop acting.” I also do some editing work with a guy named Scooter on one of the weirdest shows I have ever heard. He intentionally tries to bore people to sleep — and he has thousands of incredibly diehard fans. He is a nut. He lays it all out there. We all love him for it. It’s good to be a nut in the podcast world.

I’m not saying all podcasts should be introspective and brooding. I’m saying that, because of the fact that podcasting allows for a very direct line between producer and listener, we can bypass some social barriers that TV shows like Good Morning America will never be able to bypass. We can all be as weird (and “human”) as we like and there’s nobody between the podcaster and their audience to say otherwise. That’s very liberating.