New Ways For Audio Education

If you are like me, you probably spend a lot of time reading magazines, articles and books on your chosen area of expertise. The more you read, the more you can analyze, assimilate and then use for clients, colleagues and even speeches. Unless your profession involves some aspect of entertainment or sports, you likely don’t listen to a lot of radio or audio regarding issues in your field (unless you listen to audio books). However, there is a new way of learning more about your subject matter AND learning about how to speak more persuasively about your subject matter.

Podcasts: I’m not going to encourage you to start your own podcast—yet. But I would urge you to subscribe to as many podcasts that relate to your field as possible. Here’s why: by listening to other experts in your field, you can get a sense of how people in your profession actually talk about subjects (it is often different from how they write about the subject). Podcasts are much less refined and produced that are audio books—you will get a different feel for how people in your industry think and talk. Listening to podcasts in your field can be especially helpful if you don’t have the time or resources to travel to all of the relevant trade association conventions in your field.

How else can you benefit from listening to podcasts? Well, if you believe that the best writers tend to be the biggest readers of other people’s books (I do) then it only follows that the best speakers are often the biggest listeners to other people speaking. By paying attention to not only what people say, but how they say it, you can improve your own speaking abilities.

Where do you start? If you don’t have an Ipod, I’d recommend getting one. Then you download Itunes, from there go to the music store and click on “podcasts.” From there you can search by category or topic. If you click on “business” you are likely to find some podcast audio or video that is relevant to you. (Note: all of these podcasts are free to download and listen to, unlike music or movies)

For example, if I were to scan every talk radio station or network in the US, it is unlikely that I could find any talk show devoted solely to public speaking or media training, my chosen areas of expertise. However, when I plug in “public speaking” and “media training” into the search button on Itunes, I end up find more than a half a dozen podcast shows devoted to these topics (in addition to my own daily SpeakCast audio and video podcasts).

Some of the podcasts I listened to were amateurish. Some produced by English PR firms were slick and had game-show entertainment style production values. There was great variety in style and scope.

No one should rely on podcasts for all of their research into their own field, but it can be a nice way to supplement your knowledge base, plus break upon the flow of top 40 music or whatever else you might listen to when you are commuting or going for a jog.