I’m at the Podcasting Academy at BU today. Doug Kaye of Conversations Network is talking about podcasting basics and has some harsh words for conventional webcasts.

Paraphrasing:

I don’t like webcasts, not because they’re commercial but because companies make them hard to get to. Typically, they put some executives in front of a camera and give you a little video feed and then ask you for all this information before you can see it. That’s so they can generate leads. So they get 100 people who sign up and maybe 50 who show up when the webcast occurs. And then the salespeople are all over you.

I have a proposition for marketers. Podcasting’s marketing value is, rather than getting 100 or 50 people, put your show out there for free, put it out anonymously and you’ll get magnitudes of people listening to it. Think of it in a marketing context. Would you rather have 50 leads or 10,000 people who have listened to your program and are aware of your product? I think experience is proving that this is a better approach. And don’t interview your CEO, don’t interview your VP of marketing. Get the guy who wrote the code or designed the product to speak of things that they’re passionate about.