How will you remain relevant in podcasting?

Lots of thoughts about this tweet:

• I agree that the more interview shows there are, the easier it is to be interviewed, and thus the less prestigious (overall) it is to be interviewed.
• However, there are different levels of guests. Someone absolutely brand new to their field will almost always be thrilled to receive an interview invitation, even though someone more experienced might not see it as prestigious.
• Additionally, there are different levels of shows. A guest might see it as passé to appear on a small podcast, but they'll feel flattered to receive an invite from Joe Rogan or Ezra Klein. My boss appears on podcasts and he's the CEO of Stripe.
• None of this affects audiences at all. Audiences don't care whether or not the guest felt it was prestigious to be invited onto the show. They only care about the quality of the show: Is it educational? Is it entertaining? Does it make them feel better? etc.

Thus, the formula for having a successful podcast today is the same as it was in the past: put out amazing content that your audience finds more enjoyable than other shows. It'll grow via word of mouth, and that growth will allow you to attract better guests, which should in turn help you produce a better show, and the cycle repeats, feeding into itself.

The only difference is that, since you have more competition, the bar for a great show is higher. If you're going to do an interview show, it needs to be better than other interview shows in your niche, or you need to find a new niche with less competition.

This is the same as how the whole "book as a business card" meme wreaked the automatic prestige in being an author.

The solution in both cases is the same—either be unique or be the best at what you do.

As someone doing a podcast that's very ancillary to the rest of my life, I'm not worrying much about getting a large audience. Instead, I'm trying to make sure it's useful for people already following me and valuable for me personally, so I stay at it long enough to get good at it.

We may have to be somewhat realistic with just how innovative the medium becomes. But, I think "being a guest" on some shows will come to mean more than "being interviewed." I'm already working behind the scenes on two shows (one being my own) to reformat things a bit, so the guest is the focal point of the show, but it's not just one long, uninterrupted interview.

I want content where there are segments built around the interview that are cool, thought-provoking, or even just entertaining.