Something that I just heard during a radio interview with motivational speaker Zig Ziglar motivated me to write this. (Hey, he IS good!)
Ziglar was discussing the number of responses he gets when speaking to a live audience, versus the responses he gets after people hear his audio tapes and CDs. It’s no contest, he said. Far more people who hear Ziglar’s audio tapes and CDs contact him, compared to his live audiences. Ziglar contends that the reason has more to do with the medium than with the sheer numbers of people who hear a CD compared to people who hear him live.
When we listen to a message several times, Ziglar contends, we begin to repeat the words in our own “inner voice” and it becomes a form of self-talk. Unless the message absolutely strikes us as untrue, we almost unconsciously begin to accept it. The message becomes so strongly ingrained to Ziglar’s audio listeners, that they feel compelled to contact him.
This has real potential for podcasts. Imagine having someone listening to Donna Papacosta’s Six Communication Truths or, “Five Advantages of Social Media”–until after a few repeats, they finally “get it.” By the way, I’m letting someone else create the social media podcast–it’s just my idea right now.
The important things would be to keep the podcasts short, so that the message is manageable, and to make them informative and entertaining enough that someone would want to hear them more than once. Maybe you could sprinkle in some “Zig-isms” like:
People say to me, Zig, a motivational speech is great, but it only lasts for a short time. I tell them that motivation is like bathing and eating. All of them only last a little while, but if you include them all in your day, you will live longer, be more energized and happy… and smell better!
Does this idea pass your “sniff test”?