LOST Season 3 Premier Gets Me LOST in Podcast Land

Last year I spent weeks listening to my co-workers Mike and Erin talk lively about each new episode of the TV show LOST on ABC.

During that time my wife and I were busy with newborn twins and watching television was a luxury we couldn’t afford. So, seeing my friends get so involved in the plot, characters and all their theories about one stupid TV show left me baffled.

On a whim, a few months ago my wife and I decided to see what the hype was about. We rented the first season of LOST. That led to the second season and now… well, I’m waiting with baited breath. It took me about year, but I’ve been saved, I’m a believer and there’s a season three of LOST starting tonight. Hallelujah!

Now I’m left with the dilemma — how best to get my LOST fix. One show a week, with commercials mind you, is just not enough. So I’ve started reading forums, of which there are hundreds. Finally, I turned to my favorite pastime – podcasting.

I thought there would be at least a couple podcasts on LOST, what I didn’t expect was over 50 of them! Where do I start? After listening to the first half dozen or so, I became exhausted with the sub-par podcasts (with the exception of the ABC podcast) and gave up. Looks like I’ll have to plod through the masses to find a good one to feed my habit.

Then my thoughts turned to LOST podcast positioning. So, what’s’ in a name? Out of the 50 or so podcasts I looked at, a handful of the titles grabbed my attention:

The Official LOST podcast (best produced)

LOST Podcasting Network (Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)

Delta park gets LOST (who, what, and why would you choose this name?)

The LOST Experience (Hmm, tell me more)

And my favorite title – LOST 4 8 15 16 23 42 (but don’t waste your bandwidth)

Then there’s LOST podcast art. Four podcasts were creative enough to use the same poster art that ABC’s Get LOST podcast had. But when you scrawl a random font across the beautiful artwork, what’s the point? Be original. The one I liked the best was the Dharma grate logo with an iPod in the middle.

A few things to keep in mind when approaching an original podcast: take the time to do a little research, give your audience something thoughtful. And most important, be different. This will ultimately help you gain popularity in iTunes, soar your podcast to the top, and keep you from getting “Lost”.

For some more detailed thoughts about how to produce a podcast worth listening to, try OneUpWeb’s white paper called Corporate Podcasting 101. And, oh by the way, it’s also available as a podcast.