What Is a Podcast?

A podcast is a series of audio or video digital-media files which are distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers. Though the same content may also be made available by direct download or streaming, a podcast is distinguished from other digital-media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added.

Why Should My Business Care About Podcasting?

There are many valid reasons why corporations may want to embrace and leverage podcasting. Corporations and businesses (both large and small) have an opportunity to create a loyal listener audience that can extend their brand and communicate to the target audience. Businesses can also use this technology both externally & internally as a communication medium to keep local and world wide groups of clients or employees informed. This could be used for sales meetings to keep employees in worldwide locations up to speed on a new product or service, or as an effective medium for distance learning, helping to get the entire audience trained on any specific topic.

Example

Use podcasting to convey success stories or create brief programs to explore business trends and become a trusted advisor and source of valuable information. This can produce additional clients, increase your reputation within a specific community, and extend your valuable brand perception with customers and prospects.

Top 6 reasons your business should be podcasting:

  1. Increase your marketing reach and online visibility
  2. Improve your sales & conversion rates
  3. Regular line of communication with subscribed listeners
  4. Value added content increases loyalty
  5. Industry news and trends sets you apart from the competition
  6. Interviews with leaders in your particular niche will establish your business as a respected leader in your niche or industry.

So exactly how does marketing with podcasts work?

Most businesses need to be made aware of the increased online visibility that podcasting can provide. Your podcast could be in front of 40 million iTunes listeners if you have made an iTunes compatible RSS podcast feed; additionally, the search engines will look at the RSS podcasting feed and spider the show notes that are tied to your podcast as well.

Think of podcasting as a communication tool for your business. How do you currently use marketing tools such as: your website, newsletter and email marketing? You probably use these mediums to communicate messaging to your target audience. But there are some problems with trying to market through these communication channels.

People don’t always get your email due to overly aggressive Spam filters. They don’t come back and visit your website or read your newsletter. People actually have to make an effort to read your content. If you have a podcast, they can actually stream the audio and let it play while they are doing other tasks at their computer. People tend to multitask in order to be more efficient with the use of their time. Additionally, most users tend to prefer value added audio content that is specific to their areas of interest. Your quality audio podcast content also tends to have a higher perceived value by your target market.

Providing value added content is what your business should be focusing on. Podcasting is only a communication tool, and your podcast is only as good as the content that you provide to your audience. Make sure that you produce relevant content and not just a rambling piece of audio.

Creating the actual podcast is only a very small part of the success equation. If you need more information about how you can design and execute a proper and fully leveraged podcasting strategy please feel free to contact the Advanced Media Services team. We have experience in this media format from a technology, best practices, strategy planning, marketing, and execution perspective.

Supplemental Information on Podcasts:

ADV Media Logo WHITE