Do CFOs Listen to Podcasts?

As someone who creates content aimed at the CFO and other senior finance executives, understanding what Senior Financial Officers like to consume as content is important. There is a lot of different types of content out there. Traditional content creators like TV, newspapers and magazines are no longer the only providers of professionally oriented content. Professional services firms, associations and groups, software providers and anyone that wants to get the attention of a Chief Financial Officer is creating content to catch the attention of this Very Important Decision Maker.

When preparing to write my book, Guide to CFO Success, I created a CFO Advisor group to seek the opinions of senior finance executives and learn from their actual experiences. As part of my ongoing quest in providing fresh and relevant Finance oriented content, I reconstituted my CFO Advisor group so that we can all learn and grow.

I recently polled my CFO Advisors on their content habits, and will be sharing some of their insights over the coming weeks.

To begin with, I thought it would be interesting to understand whether CFOs listen to podcasts. Most of the content I have created over the years have been in text, whether on my blogs, in other media articles, as well as my recent book. I have never created my own podcasts, but I have been interviewed for a few podcasts over the past while.

As you can see from the graph, about half of my CFOs do listen to podcasts, while 12% of them tune in to podcasts on a regular basis.

It is interesting to see that CFOs are beginning to take a shine to the podcast as a form of content delivery. To get a better understanding of the value CFOs are getting from podcasts, as well as the future of podcasting focusing on senior finance executives, I spoke with Jack Sweeney, host of CFO Thought Leader, a series of podcasts sharing firsthand lessons from leading Chief Financial Officers. I had the opportunity to be interviewed twice by Jack for his CFO Thought Leader podcasts, and appreciated his insights and questions, which led to the creation of valuable content of interest to the CFO.

“Like many people, my “content consuming” behavior has entered a period of great change. I find I’m adopting the ways of my teenagers (early adopters). We depend almost exclusively on our TV’,s DVR and we take an iPad on family trips so we can access Netflix anytime and anywhere. Meanwhile, I’ve begun to listen to the NPR podcast on weekends simply because I added the app to my iPhone.

I find that there is a noticeable shift in my behavior and meanwhile, from everything I’ve read I’m not alone.  Why would the behavior of CFOs be any different? Clearly, it’s not, and while CFOs may be laggards when it comes to behavioral changes, they are without question changing their behaviors with the rest of us.  Also, I’ll mention once again the car industry’s adoption of in-dash apps over the next few years will also quickly grow the podcast listening audience (CFOs included).” – Jack Sweeney

Sweeney also pointed me to this quote from Tom Webster, VP of Strategy at Edison Research.

“The continued penetration of smartphones in America is changing behavior significantly. We are now seeing activities that were dominated by desktop usage in 2013, flip dramatically to become mobile behaviors. For millions of Americans, the smartphone has become ‘the first screen.’”

Podcasting is just one more distribution channel for content of interest to finance executives. Will CFOs choose podcasting as one of the major ways for them to consume relevant and interesting content as time goes on? Is podcasting a great way to get the attention of the busy CFO?

Stay tuned.