Podcasting for Business

Written by Scott Whitney

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Thank God they don’t give out gold medals for podcast downloads at the Olympics.  A recent report from media agency Universal McCann had a very interesting observation about podcasts.  According to an April 2008 survey of folks from the age of 16-54 who access the Internet daily or every other day, as of March 3, 2008, 29.5% of United States Internet users have downloaded a podcast.

Doesn’t sound too bad.  About a third of the U.S. gets podcasting.  Cool.  Uh…until you compare it with other countries. . .like. . .

• China: 74.3%
• Philippines: 61.3%
• Russia: 57%
• Spain: 51%

Out of eleven countries surveyed, the U.S. was #10.  #11? — Italy with 25.1%(there goes my Italian-language Living in Rome Podcast!).

I have to admit, I wasn’t that surprised by these numbers.  As I’ve said MANY times before, more times then not, when I tell somebody I podcast for a living, I get the tilted-head look.  But I’ve noticed a trend. . .we’re getting more and more calls and emails asking about podcasting.  And they are coming from companies of all sizes.  And recent reports indicate a positive trend as well. This is good. 

Here’s what’s bad — this report might lead a business owner to turn away from podcasting. . .which could be an opportunity lost. Now I’ll be the first to say that not every company is suitable for a corporate podcast.  .  . but for those who have a compelling story to tell…who want the teach their customers and prospects a better way to do things, you need to remember that your audience will listen to what you have to say (regardless of what you call the media by which you teach) if you entertain or educate them. 

The feedback from my customers continues to be the same…the numbers continue to climb (downloads, average downloads per show, minutes of exposure) and the our listeners continues to be appreciative. 

But, as Robert Plant would say, it makes me wonder.  Are companies not starting a podcast because of reports like these?  Are they missing out on the chance to speak directly into the ear(buds) of their customers and prospects?  It really makes me wonder. . .

Posted on May 12th, 2008
Filed under: Podcast Thoughts | No Comments »
Tags: podcast listeners, podcast survey

Written by Scott Whitney

The practice of selecting a corporate podcast to criticize in a public forum is a common one.  I’ve had the displeasure of listening to, or reading various "podcast experts" trash other company podcasts under the heading of education. 

To me, that practice is just plain hurtful. As I read elsewhere, you can teach without being cruel.

It is unnecessary to tear something (or someone) down to teach others.  I haven’t done it. . .and I won’t.

On the other hand, I do think it’s important to point out a collective error that many corporate podcasts suffer.  This problem has to do with a persistent disconnect between the majority of corporate podcasts and their audience.  The good news is that if you understand the criteria for every corporate podcast in the world, you’ll be better able to develop a show that works for you and your listeners.

The Two Groups We Care About

As I’ve said previously on this blog, there are two groups of people I care about when PodWorx begins to plan, produce, publish and promote a new show.

1. The Listener
2. The Organization for which the podcast is developed

Today’s post will focus on group #1: The Listeners

The Criteria for a Success Corporate Podcast: From the Listener’s Perspective

For a podcast to be useful in the eyes of a listener, one of two things must take place:

• The listener must be entertained
  or
• The listener must be educated

And if the podcast Gods are smiling, the listener will be entertained and educated.

The Living in Las Vegas Podcast, a Las Vegas Podcast that speaks to the experience of living in Las Vegas, does a good job of doing both.  We hear from people every week asking for advice about living in a place where 5000 people move to each month.  We’ve developed a nice community that appreciates the dual educational/entertainment nature of the show. 

But for a strictly corporate podcast, while it can certainly have both entertainment and educational elements, the key piece is that of education.  If you are not educating your listeners, you are not helping your listeners.

Now, educating your listeners does not mean spewing forth a bunch of features and benefits about your latest product or service.  This is where most corporate podcasts go terribly wrong.  And, this is where it becomes painfully obvious that the marketing department is running the show.

Instead, you must remember that you bond with people on their problems, not on your solution.  If you are able to clearly articulate the challenges, problems, concerns, goals, dreams, aspirations and desires of your customers and prospects (ie; listeners), you break down barriers and create an environment that says to your listener, "we understand what you’re going through, and we can help".

If you do spend time speaking to the problems your listeners are faced with (and be sure to recognize that a problem can be the desire to remove pain OR the drive to be in a better place), you further establish your credibility and are looked upon as an expert.  Once you’ve done that, your next step is to teach people how to work and/or live smarter. 

If you spend time listening to any of the public podcast we produce for our customers, you’ll notice a common pattern to the story we tell:

1. We first speak about the problems facing our listeners
2. Next, we talk about the ways these listeners might try to fix these problems (and how many of those attempts aren’t working)
3. Then, we teach people how to solve those problems

And when we get to the third step, while we don’t disallow the mention of the products or services the company offers, we don’t dwell on them.  Instead, we focus our attention on what the products and services do and how they help.  Less about the name, more about the action behind it.

The fun fact about selling is people don’t like to be sold, but everybody likes to buy.  And for those of you who are dying to use their podcast to improve their bottom line, remember that telling is not selling, teaching is.  For me, instead of pushing sales and marketing content down somebody’s throat, I like to explain, in the simplest form, how stuff works.  And let the listener decide if it’s helpful or not.

What does this mean to you?  When you are preparing your next podcast, ask yourself if you are helping your listener.  What’s in it for them?  Why would they appreciate receiving this content?  How will it make their life at home or at work better?  And then keep your eye on the content.  Make sure your are teaching your listeners about a better way of getting stuff done.

What about you?  What do you specifically do to help educate your podcast listeners?  What feedback have you received proving you’re doing the right thing?  Let me know!

Posted on April 28th, 2008
Filed under: Podcast Marketing, Podcast Thoughts | 1 Comment »
Tags: podcast criteria, Podcast Marketing, podcast success, podcasts

Written by Scott Whitney

Reason Number 7 – Momentum

For companies that have successfully deployed a corporate podcast, they know a little something about momentum. Specifically, if your podcast is “reliable”, that is, it produces new episodes at the promised frequency, you can’t help but build more and more momentum around your show. (Of course, if the show is terrible… not so much.)

But what about the overall awareness of podcasting? As I’ve said before [post: Describing What a Podcast Is], many folks still don’t know what a podcast is. And if you read enough press, they’ll tell you that podcasting is a fad that is close to being (or is) over. However, a recent report suggests that podcasting continues to move up on our collective awareness scale.

According to an article I found on PodcastingNews.com, podcasting audiences have grown 40% in one year. The article states that e-Marketer’s January 2008 Arbitron-Edison Media Research study found the following:

• The podcast audience has grown nearly 40% in the last year.
• Podcasting reaches 18% of the US population, up from 13% a year ago.
• Podcast adoption is accelerating. A year ago, they reported that the podcast audience had grown 18%, less than half of last year’s growth.
• An estimated 23 million Americans have listened to a podcast in the past month.

This is good news. And it matches my experience here in Las Vegas. When I first moved here, the vast majority of people I talked to didn’t have the first clue what a podcast was. This is becoming less and less the case as the podcasting word continues to grow. (I consider this especially promising in Las Vegas, which I believe is 2 years behind my previous home base (SF Bay Area) when it comes to the adoption of technology–specifically, online technology like podcasting.)

The key to growing these numbers is to continue to deliver great content. Content that either educates or entertains your audience. If we all continue to work hard at delivering a great product, podcasting will continue to grow in the collective awareness and continue to help folks learn, laugh and take advantage of this great communication tool on their time, whenever and wherever they want!

Are you seeing an increase in podcast awareness where you live? Let me know!

Posted on April 14th, 2008
Filed under: Podcast Reasons List, Podcast Thoughts | No Comments »
Tags: podcast awareness, podcast reasons

Written by Scott Whitney

One of the benefits to speaking at the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce Business Education Series has been the new PodWorx customers that have come as a result of that presentation. Especially interesting to me is that these customers fall more into the small/medium business (SMB) category as opposed to the podcasts we produce for larger companies like Polycom and Interwoven.

To date, each of the new customers we’ve begun working with has a bit of a challenge ahead of them before they can begin really taking advantage of a company podcast/blog.

They need to get their online house in order.

A great podcast, when done well, will drive traffic to your website (and vice-versa). But what happens if your website isn’t ready for that additional traffic? What happens if the search engine juice a podcast provides is wasted on a corporate website whose search engine strength is weak?

You fix it.

A great example of that is LASIK of Nevada. Dr. Rothman and his team are Las Vegas LASIK and Reno LASIK experts. (Believe it or not, Dr. Rothman has performed over 26,000 LASIK surgeries. . .which seems like a lot. . .if you ask me.) In talking about a potential podcast, we both agreed that before any podcasting happens, we have to take steps to make his website more search-engine friendly. We’ve decided to take a two-step approach.

Our first step is to simply clean up his existing website. His titles, metadata and overall html code was hurting his search engine results. Once we get that taken care of (in the short term), our second step will be to rebuild his website from the ground up as a platform that is both search engine and podcast/blog friendly.

Stay tuned as we continue down this journey. In the meantime, I wonder. . .what percentage of companies have stand-alone podcast website versus podcast content integrated within their existing website? There are pluses and minuses to both options. What are you doing (or considering)?

Posted on April 3rd, 2008
Filed under: Podcast Marketing | No Comments »
Tags: LASIK, Podcast, website+design

Written by Scott Whitney

Reason Number 6 – Web 2.0

This is an interesting “reason” because it depends largely on how you deploy your podcast as to whether or not this will work for you.

If asked to guess at the percentage of business podcasts that take advantage of the Web 2.0ness of a podcast, I would guess it’s in the single digits.

Web 2.0ness? What the hell is that? Let me clarify.

If you search for a definition of Web 2.0 in Google, you’ll get about a five million results. This tells us is that if we ask 100 people to define Web 2.0, we’ll likely get 100 different answers. To me, Web 2.0 has to do with a sense of collaboration with your visitors which is predicated on an architecture of participation. In other words, the platform that the podcast sits on is designed to make conversing with your listeners easy for them. . .and for you. The problem is that most corporate/business podcasts do not allow for a collaborative environment. Meaning, they don’t allow comments.

Allowing comments about a podcast episode demonstrates your interest in making it easy to do business with you. Here’s great example.

Interwoven, who I’ve spoken about before, decided at the launch of Intersections that they wanted to allow comments. The reasoning was simple—if a listener needed clarification or had insight not presented in an episode, they wanted to know about it. This decision lead to a perfect instance of putting out a helpful episode, getting feedback from a listener, and closing the loop with that listener.

The episode was titled, “Interwoven TeamSite’s Best Kept Secret” and featured senior product marketing manager Annie Weinberger taking the listener through a feature in TeamSite she felt was largely overlooked. About a month and a half after the episode was available online (demonstrating that new listeners were discovering the episode over a month after it went live), we received a comment:

“Do you have a set of slides that could bring me up to speed quickly? A teamsite 101.”

– Rogers Johnson

In my book, this is an invitation to have a sales conversation with somebody. Now, I’m not saying that you start SELLING here. But you do start having a conversation. . .which can certainly lead to a sale.

Annie responded with a solution. Actually, two solutions:

Hi Rogers,

Funny you should mention it, there is a WCM 101 webcast this Tuesday, March 11th and you can register to view it here -

http://interwoven.market2lead.com/go/interwoven/wcm101?tile=master&userId=Guest

If you are unable to attend and would like a link to the recording or a copy of the slides, feel free to contact me at annie@interwoven.com.

– Annie Weinberger

Annie demonstrated that Interwoven was very interested in helping Rogers get the answer he was looking for. As a matter of fact, if Annie’s first suggestion wasn’t good enough (the webcast), she provided a second solution: her personal email. Well done!

This is the kind of interaction companies like Interwoven love! And it should be something you embrace as well. It further demonstrates your company’s desire to improve Approachability. And it demonstrates that your company is aware and taking advantage of what the latest technology has to offer.

What about you? Does your podcast allow for comments? For many companies, they fear a commenter will say something unkind about a particular guest. Does that worry you?

Posted on March 31st, 2008
Filed under: Podcast Reasons List | No Comments »
Tags: Podcast, podcast+reasons, Web 2.0