Last week I was having a new Internet line installed at my home. I explained to the workers, all under 30, that I needed a period of quiet during the middle of the day because I was about to record a podcast. "What's a podcast?" one of the young crew asked. "It's an Internet radio show," I explained. "Oh," he said, "I have heard a few of those. But what's a podcast exactly?" I then launched into an impromptu lesson on podcasts but it dawned on me that this fellow, like about 20 percent of Americans, was indeed listening to a podcast ... and like the majority of the world, he didn't know what a podcast is. This underscores some very interesting research revealed on the latest episode of The Marketing Companion. Calling a podcast a podcast is confusing to many people. We don't call an online magazine a printcast. It's still a magazine. We don't call an online newspaper a journalcast. It's still a newspaper. Why do we treat audio differently? One podcaster who has broken away from the podpack is Mike Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner and the talented host of the SME podcast. "We call the Social Media Marketing podcast an on-demand talk radio show," he said, "because everyone knows what talk radio is, and on-demand is an easy way to distinguish it from traditional radio." This might seem trivial until you hear the explanation from my podcast ... er ... on demand talk radio show ... co-host Tom Webster and why this nuance might be a huge hurdle to mainstream growth. I learned something important through this discussion and I think you will too. Let's dive in, shall we?

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