are podcasts good for live q&a’s?

I was recording a podcast. It was a Q&A where we asked followers on X about the opportunity to ask questions that would be answered on an upcoming episode.

And something my co-host mentioned had me thinking.

Are live Q&A’s effective? Well, we can certainly say they are popular. Specifically via video. There is a different feel to getting answers to questions on the spot. And there are a lot of instances where that’s the best. Look at politics. Though when hosted you know the person had it coming their way. Townhouse, not so much.

In tech videos it’s the same thing. And a lot of other areas. Fun to hear someone from the community ask a question and just see how “on” the person is to give a good answer. In the WordPress space, Matt Mullenweg’s Q&A’s are a good example of this. And as much as I don’t agree with it personally, lots of people like to see someone when they are on the spot.

Is there room for recorded Q&A’s?

This is where it dawned on me. You still want those questions coming from the community, but in our case, not having it live gave the person the time to find the answers if they didn’t know the specifics. And as a result the listener gets a solid answer, often pulled in from a variety of resources, as in this example, the guest’s team.

The other advantage of this is when someone shares a lot of resources in their answers. When live, you can say, come back and we’ll be posting the links here in our show notes. How many times does someone forget to “come back”. But if not live, you have those ready in the show notes for anyone to go to either while listening or right afterwards, while you have their attention.

So there is room for both and they work in different ways.