5 Things to Consider Before Podcasting As a Small Business

5 Things to Consider Before Podcasting As a Small Business

No doubt you like me, you are using your transit time, be it travelling or wait appointment and possibility even your insomnia to listen with your iPod to podcasts in your area of interest. I have a number of marketing favorites now including:

Ten Golden Rules

Ducttapemarketing

Six Degrees of Separation

Marketing Over Coffee

Marketing Geeks

These are all great and it begs the question should we all be doing podcasts for our businesses. Well, here are 5 things to consider before you take on this new social media. See if you can tick each area off.

Susan Bratton from Dishy Mix makes a good call when she explains whether you should go into podcasting. A veteran at podcasting, she explains that her preferred medium for communicating is to speak with people, even over blogging or twittering. Susan does have a great personality and she has honed her interviewing skills and so makes for an interesting host.

1. So deciding if this medium suits your style is number 1. If you feel you would rather blog, or remain in the background then this forum is not for you.

2. What do you want to achieve with the podcast? Is it another tool to connect with your customers? Is it serving a particular niche? To compliment yourself as an expert in a area is another valid reason. Maybe it is just to serve your ego, perhaps not the best reason but some people honestly want to share their burning passion. I think Jay uses this medium the best and that is to provide really great content in a different way. People are busy and to be able to download Jay and listen to him and is great expert guests and content is a must on my list. This also I am sure provides him with many speaking engagements as an expert.

3. You have to keep to a regular format which means setting the time aside to do the podcast every week, month or fortnight. Once you have the listeners you need to commit to the schedule. This is a hard one for some of us with limited resources but as Jay so cleverly does there are many ways to do a podcast. You can do it remotely from sites or take your ipod with a recording app and capture content at conferences, with clients and other guests. However, it is valid to remember that the editing of the podcast can take up to 3 times as long as the recording.

4. Technical skill – there are so many resources out there for podcasting that it is now easier than ever to do a podcast.

5. However to make it useful there are some categories that you need to look at. Using podcasting music from Podsafe network is really just the beginning.

Format and length

Content is king – is what you have to say worth listening

I think it is more entertaining to have a conversation so how do you create this, ie guests, call-ins

Editing – cover songs, sound quality and humour all add to the entertainment value

Publicise your pod – promote it and syndicate it via RRS

Monitize – sell archives of your show via membership or CD transcripts, make product recommendations (affiliate and sponsorhip program, sell web banners for your podcast site.

Maybe like Moms Talk Biz – Kelly McCausey dicsusses in her podcast guide, we will all be podcasting sooner or later because our audience wants it, our competitors are doing it, and it is a very affordable communication tool. We already create websites, blogs, write articles and tweet so maybe podcasts/ be or audio or video like Andrew Lock is the next step?