Podcast Innovators

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If you haven’t fired up your digital music player and tuned in to a podcast lately, it’s time to familiarize yourself with this technology. Because podcasting is going to be very big very soon and marketers should understand the phenomenon and its potential.

You can find a good definition of podcasting at Whatis.com and my column in February’s BtoB Magazine introduces the topic. So I won’t go into a detailed explanation here. There are some very innovative applications of podcasting I’ve seen recently that marketers should become familiar with. This is a story of two of them.

General Motors launched a podcasting initiative about a year ago to complement its GM FastLane Blogs. Most people don’t think of GM as an early adopter but the company has been fast and innovative in experimenting with community media.

Maybe that’s because it’s put much of the responsibility in the hands of one person and let him go to work. Michael Wiley, director of new media and a longtime public relations professional, said the decision to launch blogs two years ago and podcasts in 2005 took less than a day. GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz loved the idea and has been an active contributor to both forums.

The podcasts have been a home run for GM at very low cost. They spotlight different vehicles, often in conjunctions with re-designs or launches, and usually interview executives who are responsible for them. The short segments are nothing flashy, but they’re clean, well-paced and informative.

“You need to have a strong ethical policy and write in a clear, conversational style,” Wiley says of GM’s blogging efforts. “No one wants to read marketing copy or press release type writing.”

And do they perform. Last summer’s podcast interview with Corvette chief architect Dave Hill was downloaded more than 70,000 times. Some FastLane blog entries get more than 500 comments. Market research like that would cost a fortune. GM’s cost? “We’ve never spent a dollar on a podcast,” Wiley says. In fact, GM isn’t spending on promotion, either. “We want [the podcasts] to stay grass roots and for people to find out through word of mouth,” he says.

What’s got some people at GM really excited about podcasting, though, is its potential inside the firewall. The company has a vast network of dealers, service outlets and suppliers and all of them need constant communication. Distributing catalogs and videotapes is expensive and wasteful. Digital distribution is so much more efficient.

“It’s low- to no-cost,” Wiley says. “It’s an opportunity to give people extreme detail, if necessary. It can be used for so many different things – tutorials, help desk, service professionals. The opportunities are unlimited.”

And wait till Apple’s rumored new full-sized video iPod comes out. Bye-bye VHS tapes.

Over at Whirlpool USA, the appliance maker launched a podcast series last summer that embodies the spirit of social media. The Whirlpool American Family podcasts are updated about once a week.

There’s nothing about home appliances in these programs. They’re about child-rearing, schooling, health, work/family issues, nutrition and a host of other family concerns. They’re the brainchild of Audrey Reed-Granger, a Whirlpool publicist who admits that she didn’t even know what a podcast was until a few weeks before she suggested the idea to Whirlpool management.

“I listened to a few podcasts and it struck me that this was the reason I got into journalism,” she says. “It was very earnest, just average people reporting on things that go on in normal life. I wanted to capture that.”

Her bosses liked the idea and the nominal cost. The first podcast launched in late July. By September, the online buzz became apparent.

“There was a lot of blogosphere chatter about Whirlpool,” Reed-Granger says. “We figured out that it was about American Family. People were endorsing the podcasts in their blogs and other bloggers were tuning in. I started getting e-mail from people suggesting speakers.”

What started as interviews with friends and contacts has become a mainstream radio program. Book publishers and PR agencies pitch their clients as guests on American Family Podcasts. Whirlpool had logged more than 30,000 downloads when I spoke to Reed-Granger in January but the series is also carried on more than a dozen independent podcast sites that don’t release statistics.

The benefit to Whirlpool? It’s hard to say. Both GM’s Wiley and Whirlpool’s Reed-Granger acknowledge that ROI is a tough call in the blogosphere. You have to think about these media experiments as a branding play, like public relations.

“It gave us a fresh image,” Wiley said. “It’s humanized us.”

Adds Reed-Granger, “It’s less about the brand than the essence of the people that market the products. It’s made us more likeable.”

Both podcast series deliver the goods on usefulness. GM’s is the more marketing-oriented of the two efforts, but it’s essentially an information play to enthusiasts. Whirlpool doesn’t even pretend to pitch its products in the audio program. It’s strictly a valuable information service to potential purchasers of its appliances. This is what social media marketing is all about. You need to be transparent, honest and helpful.

In a future issue, I’ll look at some of my favorite podcasts and talk about best practices for content producers.

Tips for Winning Webcasts

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Almost anything you can do in a white paper you can do in a webcast (“webinar,” by the way, is a trademarked term). So why choose the multimedia approach?

One reason is speed. If you have a speaker and a presentation, a webcast gets your message online with a minimum of pre-production work. Be aware, though, that publishers are more inventory-constrained with webcasts and your waiting time could be months. Another reason is speaker quality. If you have a great speaker, whether your own employee or an outsider, a webcast can deliver a provocative forum for your message. A third is audience interaction. Live webcasts can create a real-time dialog with the audience that you can’t get in any other online medium. Finally, webcasts let you work with complex formats like panel discussions or Q&A interviews that don’t work in print.

But there are tradeoffs. The biggest is audience engagement. Because a webcast requires your audience to invest a significant amount of time in front of the computer, you risk reaching a smaller audience.  Podcasting offers a possible solution to this problem, but I’ll deal with that in a separate newsletter. Webcasts may also be more costly. It’s also harder to repurpose a webcast created in a proprietary format for use with another partner’s service. If you want maximum flexibility, check to be sure your program can be delivered over a standard media player like Real Player.

If you’ve decided to go the webcast route, here are a few factors to consider in making your event a success:

Write for the medium – A webcast is a direct-access experience, meaning that you have little flexibility for tangents, sidebars and appendices. Choose a topic that can be address serially from beginning to end. A repurposed conference presentation or training seminar is a good choice. Provide an agenda at the front end and stick to it. Break your presentation up into digestible segments and indicate clearly when you’re transitioning from one topic to another. Remember that your audience may tune out or become distracted at times. You want them to be able to return to your presentation without losing their place.

Choose a good speaker – You’ll want someone with a clear, deliberate cadence and an engaging style. Stammers, pauses and mumbles will undermine your message. Remember that your smartest technical people aren’t necessarily your best speakers. If you’re inviting listener questions or comments, choose a speaker who’s fast on his or her feet. It can be time-consuming and expensive to go back and edit a presentation later.

Keep it brief – People have about a half-hour attention span for an online event. If you’re going to go much over that, be aware that you will lose listeners. If you’ve bought a full hour of speaking time, break up your presentation into segments that will re-engage the listeners. For example, go to questions, launch an instant poll or bring in a second speaker for a discussion.

Keep slides readable – I always recommend using a lot of visuals because they keep the audience engaged and provide structure and pacing for your speaker. But be aware that your audience may not have the full screen available to look at your slides. Spread your visuals across more slides, if possible, and use fonts and images that won’t make your viewers squint. Large images can take a long time to load and may cause the audio to break up on slow connections.

Take advantage of interactive features – If your service provider offers the option of interactive questions/comments from your audience or real-time polling, take advantage of it. It’s a great way to get feedback on the spot and learn something about your audience’s interests. Be aware, though, that live events offer less margin for error and tighter scheduling options. Also, not every event lends itself to interactivity. A technical topic oriented toward developers usually generates better interaction than a market overview or other general topic.

Make slides available for download – Your listeners should have the option of reviewing and sharing your visuals. It’s a great way to generate follow-up inquiries and some media partners can give you a registration form that generates leads from slide downloads. If you’re concerned about intellectual property, use PowerPoint’s non-editable .pps format.

Some media partners offer you a turnkey option to create a printed version of your presentation. This can be a great way to generate leads by offering content as a white paper for hosting on your site or elsewhere.

A few words on video: With nearly 90% of business Internet users now using high-speed connections, video is an attractive webcast option. However, it’s generally much more expensive, requires travel and can introduce scheduling complexities. For industry giant companies, video can be a way to enhance their upscale image. And there are some things you can do with video that you can’t with a simple audio format. However, I think for most companies video is an expensive indulgence.

10 Questions to Ask About Your Blogging Strategy

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Flash back to 1996. The Worldwide Web was a cauldron of activity. Businesses were rushing to get online. Most business managers weren’t asking why they needed a website; they just wanted one as quickly as possible. Millions of dollars were squandered on sites that were impossible to find or hard to use.

Fast forward to 2006. Social media is the rage. Business magazines say blog or be roadkill. Businesses want a stake in the blogosphere, even if they don’t know why.

Blogging can be a valuable channel to your customers and prospects, a key part of your public relations strategy, a market research tool and a launching pad for new products. But there are many ways to blog. Know what you want to achieve and how to get there.

Here are 10 questions you should ask before you even post your first blog entry.

  1. What’s the business objective? You’ll invest time and money to build a blog presence. What are your business goals? Awareness? Revenue? Leads? Leadership? Know where you’re going before you start the trip.
  2. Who’s the audience? There are plenty of potential readers out there and chances are you don’t care about reaching 99% of them. Social media is about focused communities and groups don’t need to be large to be important. Before you begin, know who your target audience is and how to reach it. Create a strategy for building affinity and let that define your online presence.
  3. What are you going to tell them? Spewing marketing messages won’t work. The only way to make your blog distinctive is to give readers useful information that they can’t find anywhere else.
  4. Who’s going to do the talking? Blogging is about personalities. So who will you put online? The CEO? VP of Engineering? Product Managers? Your company’s message will be defined by the people who speak on your behalf. Choose them wisely.
  5. What is your voice? It’s not just what you say, it’s also how you say it. Are you going to be friendly and engaging or formal and authoritative? How will your blog voice mesh with your corporate voice? What does your blog say about what kind of person or organization you are?
  6. How will you deliver your message? Short and punchy or thoughtful and reflective? Are you going to tell people what’s right or invite them to comment? How will you use humor, drama, irony, story-telling, metaphor, example, exaggeration, foreboding and other tools? Any approach can work if you know how to apply it.
  7. How will you get readers? Posting a blog is no more effective than building a website if you don’t know what to do with it. With 30 million blogs out there, why should anyone come to yours? There are simple, inexpensive steps you can take to dramatically improve your visibility. But most people don’t know what they are.
  8. What will you do with responses? – Do you want all your readers to tell you what they think or would you rather filter comments? How do you effectively invite people to talk back to you? What do you do when the feedback loop gets out of hand and creates a blog swarm? Gaining an audience in the blogosphere may be your greatest objective but it could be your worst nightmare if you don’t know how to manage it.
  9. How will you measure success? If all you want to do is build awareness for your company, you may be happy just to count traffic and links. If you’re trying to generate revenue, then your choice of ad programs is important. Or maybe you want to use your blog as a base for your PR efforts or to research your audience. There are many potential benefits to blogging but they require different approaches to the task.
  10. What’s the next step? Once you’ve got regular visitors and steady traffic, you’ll want to consider expanding your franchise. Should you launch another blog? Start a website? Write a magazine column? Launch a podcast? Write a book? There are lots of ways to build a successful blog into a franchise, but you need to know the tradeoffs of each.

You can figure out the answers to these questions yourself through trial and error. Or you can save time and money by getting expert advice. Experts can help shortcut these questions by showing you what’s working in the field today. Blogging can be a great addition to your marketing and PR strategy or a time sink. How you prepare will make a big difference.