It’s absolutely inevitable. We are forecasting that by 2024, every single business that currently has an active blog will also have a dedicated podcast. It may sound crazy now but the future will allow anyone, anywhere to create high quality audio and podcasts with just their computer and mobile phone in much less time than today. The days of $10,000 audio equipment and expensive studios will be no more.
There are roughly 5.72MM B2B businesses within the US. Of these, roughly 4.2MM also blog consistently to generate leads. According to Hubspot, B2B marketers have found blogging to be significantly more time and cost-effective than traditional lead generation methods. Why would a business spend time on generating free content for others to enjoy? Well, these businesses understand that being a thought leader dramatically increases their trust and revenue within their market. In fact, a content preference survey found that 96% of respondents want content with more input from industry thought leaders; and 47% of buyers viewed three to five pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep. In the near future, podcasting will be an essential part of all businesses content strategy.
B2B companies that blogged 11 times or more per month got 3X more traffic than those blogging only once or less per month. In 2017, 70% of B2B marketers prioritize delivering high-quality content over quantity
Over time, businesses have spent more time on an individual blog post, focusing more on quality over quantity.
In 2016, people spent about 3 hours and 16 minutes per blog post. In 2019, this number has stayed about the same as it is easier to write posts, add photos, videos, research, etc to blogs. For the companies that blogged at least 11 times per month, they spent about 40 hours on blogging alone.
For podcasts, as you develop a cadence unique to you, you can currently expect a 4:1 ratio. This means that for every 1 minute of audio content, it will take you about 4 minutes to produce. If your show is 1 hour long, it would have taken you about 4 hours to produce. In the future, technology and services will eventually get this ratio down to closer to 1:1.
Even finding people to interview for your podcast is becoming easier. Both Interview Valet and Interview Connections can help you find the perfect interviewee for your podcast.
Let’s run some pretty mind boggling numbers. If we are right and there are over 4.2MM B2B US podcasts by 2024. And we assume an average of 45 minutes per podcast and 1 episode per company a week. There will be a total of 756,000,000 minutes of new audio content produced each month.
In a previous post, we made an argument that we were on a road to 3MM podcasts.
Total estimated number of podcasts per year
This conservative estimate looks a lot like the total number of websites over time.
Total number of websites on the internet (2000–2018)
Just like 10,000 years ago when communication, stories, entertainment and knowledge spread through audio via the spoken language, the next 10,000 years will be the same. As the modern technical world becomes more and more screenless, audio will make a huge quantum leap forward. Why? Because audio is one of the most intimate forms of media; just like it has been for the last 10,000 years. With audio, we visualize the images within our minds as we hear the stories being told. That is the power of audio.