The Problem with “Subscribe”
What does “subscribe to a podcast” mean to the average person? I learned tonight that it is confusing to the newcomer.
I was having a conversation with a thoughtful and smart entrepreneur friend of mine. We discussed podcasting and he asked a few questions as a new Mac user. He wanted to know if he could right click on a podcast link to have it automatically download and queue to load on his iPod. I admitted that functionality did not exist without additional tools or steps but that he could just click the “one click subscribe” button. He said “yes, but what if I don’t want to subscribe.” We had a disconnect. “Why don’t you want to subscribe?” He said he didn’t want to give his person information just to get a podcast. Wow! I was inside the bubble and he was outside. I knew “podcasting” sometimes caused the “I don’t own an iPod” response, but I had missed the subscribe issue.
Lesson: smart people who are new to podcasting still find the terms confusing and off-putting. Easy to say it is their problem, but if you are building a business in podcasting – this is our problem.
Michael this is a good post for many reasons. Podcasters need to spend more time going down this road to determine what (if anything) we can do to help improve the experience from the listener/viewer’s point-of-view.
I’ve changed all my sites to say “Subscribe Free” to help defeat the “I don’t want to pay for anything” argument.
It might be helpful if you took this to the next level in a future post and started a discussion on alternatives to “subscribe.”
Great point Michael and Scott. Most of the non-pod people I talk to think subscription implies giving up money and personal information. That’s what we get for stealing terms used by the magazine business.
I think I’ll use the term “Subscribe Free” in my next redesign of Venture Voice.
This issue underscores the great need for education one social media. I think that everyone who is in the business of podcasting should dedicate at least 10% of their time to either pointing to or creating basic education on the tools, processes and options in the world of podcasting.
If everyone chips in a little bit I believe that this approach can make a world of difference in creating a robust group of educated business professionals.
There is no doubt that this our problem. We are a pretty insular group of people who have bootstrapped many technologies for a medium of delivery and a genre of content. Say that 5 times fast.
For me to build my podcasting business I have had to rely heavily on consultants that have social skills and tech knowledge someplace in between the pr/marketing world and the podcasting world to work with potential clients. When left to my own devices I find that I go too fast, too far with a potential client who is just looking to get their feet wet. They aren’t interested in jumping in to the deep end, even if they were they wouldn’t know how to get there with my directions.
Rob makes a good point about dedicating time to educating people about podcasting but finding even that 10% when most of us are working day jobs on top of podcasting can be hard. The people who need the eduation is us. The education at this stage of podcasting’s development comes from working with users and clients to speak their language. By doing so we can lower the threshold for access to our little club.
Another great post. In some ways, I find this more problematic than the “I need to have an iPod” issue. Subscribe Free is a better term.
I wonder if “Automatic Bookmark” is a better term?
I take a different stand here and always have. In some ways I’d rather have an audience of 1,000 where I have the e-mail address and some demographics than to have 20,000 unknowns out there. I feel that the audience has to give us something for our efforts and if its not money then it needs to be something worthwile to us. But I do agree the current subcription process is almost useless in the market place. How about “Automated Access”
This debate about terms to use in podcasting has been going on for sometime but its really not a problem just in this medium. Terms are often borrowed and repurposed to try and map something new to something well known. TV borrowed from radio, the telephone from the telegraph, magazines from newspapers and so on.
I’m not at all sure we should be spending a lot of time trying to fret about what term we use unless we really think creating a brand new nomenclature is going to be less confusing than adjusting the connotations of borrowed terms to more aptly describe our meaning.
Sure, “podcasting”, “subscribing” and even “portable media” will be confusing until what we are doing has been more fully infused into the culture. That happens primarily through producing relevant and compelling content, and secondarily through education and lots of PR.
I like both Rob’s and Kris’ suggestions about spending some of our time on education and PR, but lets not get sidetracked away from creating content that is valuable enough to justify the cultural growing pains to get it out there.
This confusion is compounded for me even more so as I have a paid for subscription service!
I stopped calling it a “Subscription service” a few months back and now refer to it as a “Membership”.
I still have references to subscribing in iTunes on my site but in view of these suggestions, I think I’ll revamp them. Here is the difference:
Original
“What’s even better is that you can also download new screencasts automatically as soon as they are published by subscribing to ScreenCastsOnline in iTunes simply by clicking this link!”
Revised
“What’s even better is that you can also download new screencasts automatically as soon as they are published by bookmarking ScreenCastsOnline in iTunes simply by clicking this link!”
I think the revised entry is much less intimidating to a podcast newbie!
All great comments. I like the “Subscribe Free” concept. We have always known there were issues with the terminology. As we seek greater acceptance, moving from the “Early Adopter/Innovator” crowd to more mainstream users this will be a bigger issue. The terms are set, but how do we best present them to the new user? That is my main concern. There is an answer – we just need to find it.
I just listened to a podcasr from Leo Laporte where he suggests we move away from using terms liks podcast since it ties us to close to Apple and people think they need an ipod and itunes to hear a podcast. He suggest using Netcast which I think is great but I’m sure won’t catch on. Podcast is here to stay but as Michael said it’s our responsability that our visitros know the terms and what they need and do not need to enjoy a podcast.
Thanks for the great post. I agree with Kris about us being pretty insular. I consider myself a geek and that means that I usually “get” technical things a lot faster than my co-workers and family.
It’s good for us to hear these things from each other so that we don’t lose the connection with less geeky people.
A term I have seen somewhere is instead of “Subscribe to the Podcast” is “Listen to the Podcast”. This is probably what I’ll be using in the future with a link to another page with a description of how to listen. This is in itself a misnomer, but I find that non-technical people don’t really care about all the finer details of subscribing or listening, etc.
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They do you tell her hard core movies nipples. Joking! I see you.