Podcasting isn't the next big thing, it's the next big category of content - Varun Duggirala

Let's have a look at what entrepreneur, content creator and podcaster, Varun Duggirala has to say about the rise of podcasting. Don't miss out!

Podcasting is often compared with video content since most podcasts seem to have a video version as well these days. But, it's building itself into its own category of content and this is both enabling a whole new stream of creators and disrupting the video side of the creator economy.

Let's start with how this experience differs and why it's a category by itself. Listening to Podcasts is an intimate experience. You feel like you are immersed in the content (or rather sitting on the same table as the hosts), which builds what I can only call a sense of intimacy that other social/video platforms do not. You listen and learn, you create and project information for someone to plug in and imbibe. This is why when you meet a podcaster, you tend to talk to them like you've known them for years.

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This level of intimacy allowed Podcasters to build long-form content to retain the audience's attention for extended periods and further segment those long episodes into smaller pieces of content that can be deployed across traditional social media channels. Plus, with the advent of social-audio features through Clubhouse, Twitter spaces, and other such upcoming creator options from Spotify, Facebook, etc. they've been able to start moving towards an interactive form of audio content that covers the one aspect that's eluded podcasters till now, instant audience feedback/conversations.

These twin abilities of long-form audience retention and the ability to segment their podcast into multiple smaller pieces of content have led most of these popular YouTube creators to launch their podcasts and scale them with their already existing audience. And in doing so, changing the structure of how video-based creator platforms had functioned so far.

Each creator is now a multi-channel media network with content across audio, video, text, and beyond and the podcast, in many ways, is becoming the foundational piece of content for them to build everything else around. It's the nucleus of their content ecosystem.

Article inputs by Varun Duggirala - content creator, podcaster, entrepreneur, and

personal development pundit.

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