Posted by: David Dittman
June 2, 2007
Issue #141

Why Podcasting is a No-Brainer
For Your Marketing Needs

In today’s issue:

• What podcasting really means…
  
• How podcasting is an Easy Affordable way to market your product…
  
• You can use the "community" of Internet shoppers to drive clients to your product…
• How you can "diversify" your media for maximum coverage…
• How to easily implement podcasting on your website on marketing campaign…
• Some clear and concise resources for learning the more technical side of podcasting…

What is a Podcast?

A few weeks ago I explained in depth what an RSS feed is and how to use it. This week I will take the next logical step to using syndication on your web site: podcasting.

Podcasting is really just a more specific form of syndication using RSS feeds specifically for audio and more recently video.

Typically when you think of RSS feeds, you tend to think text Blogs and text articles. Of course you can put media in an RSS feed but, the norm used to be, just stick a picture at the top of your article intro and then when the client clicks on the feed they can get the whole media experience of your website.

Well, podcasting takes this to the next level. Instead of a quick text blurb to get you interested, podcasting gives you rich media first.

It might be easiest to think of this in an example.

I decide that I would like to have a series of video computer lessons. I have a series of 5 one-hour long lessons that all build on each other.

Now, the product is the five hours of instruction. As a marketing teaser for my product I can also produce 5 five-minute movies that give you a taste of what the entire lesson will get you. So here is where podcasting comes into play.

Now I’m just a poor computer tech, so I don’t have the bankroll to fund a grand marketing campaign. So instead I decide that I can get the most bang for my buck by marketing online.

Now I take my 5, five-minute intros and I set up a five-part podcast series giving you online computer instruction in under 30 minutes!

Of course I’m banking on the fact many people will want the entire five-hour series after they get a taste of my product via my podcast.

The most common podcast is probably not video, but an mp3 audio series. I say probably because video has blown-up so much lately, that the ratio is shifting more to video than audio.

I’m going to talk about both video and audio but, let’s discuss them in the order that they made their mark as a technology.

And frankly, even though video is the latest greatest rage, audio makes a lot more sense for most people, due to the portability and low price of mp3 players these days.

Alright let’s talk podcasting.

In this case you can simply think of podcasting as a specific radio broadcast that in most cases can be saved so you can listen to it whenever you like.

How Podcasting is an Easy Affordable way
to market your product

In the example above I outlined one possible use of podcasting with video but, be creative.

I always give Newtson a hard time about him talking about old technology… He’s so quick to use a buzz word that he hears and then acts like it’s brand new. Yes John, I’ve heard of blogs and believe me they’re not new…

Alas, I will give credit where credit is due however, John thinks “outside the box” when he talks about these slightly outdated technologies and frankly that’s the key to effective use of technology. Why reinvent the wheel, when all it takes is a bit of “strategery” in the way you use existing technology.

The inevitable truth of technology is that just because something is designed with a particular purpose doesn’t mean you’re married to that purpose. Podcasting started as a way to save audio files, not video files. Video is a relatively new use of the same idea of podcasting.

Audio is still effective and much easier to create then most videos. So as you begin to explore the use of podcasting don’t be afraid to start with audio and work into video as your confidence grows.

You can use the "community" of Internet shoppers
to drive clients to your product

I think one fairly underutilized form of podcasting is as an acquisition campaign.

You have millions of people each day scouring the net for audio that they can use in their daily commutes, business trips, or just listen to while at work. There has got to be a way to utilize this pool of potential clients, this “community” of internet audio junkies.

Well, fight fire with fire! If the people want audio give them audio!

Here is a simplified acquisition campaign using podcasting:

1. You design your podcast series based off of something entertaining, stimulating or just solely related to your product line.
2. Now you post your audio to your website and a well-known audio sharing site like, iTunes or mp3.com.
3. Now you drive traffic to an advertorial landing page promoting your series by referencing your site within the audio.
4. Now the client lands on your site to find more info or the continuation of your audio and thus signs up for the free podcast series you created in step one.
5. Now you have a good potential client and you’ve spent virtually nothing.

How you can "diversify" your media
for maximum coverage

In teaching, one principle that is taught to new teachers is that everyone learns differently. You have your auditory learners, your visual learners and spatial (hands on) learners to name a few. Well, as the marketer there is an important lesson to be learned here.

If children learn differently do you think that changes when they grow up and now have money to spend?

No way!

So by using a little logic we can deduce that by having multiple ways to peddle our product, text, AUDIO, MOVIES, and interactive devices, we now have a much better way to reach the populace.

Elementary, my dear Watson.

And there are a couple of huge advantages to using podcasts from a consumer’s perspective:

• It takes no work to watch a video or listen to audio
• I can take audio/video with me, for commutes or business travel

The biggest advantage is that I now have one more way to reach customers. One more tool in my toolbox of marketing.

How to easily implement podcasting
on your website or marketing campaign

All right we talked about what a podcast is, why you should use it and now it’s time to talk about HOW to use it.

I’m going to start with a simple audio example and then discuss some simple movie examples.

Creating an Audio Podcast

Please note that software does exist that will allow you to do all these steps in one place, significantly speeding up and simplifying the process. I found a few out there that look great but, I hesitate to mention them since I have no idea if they are any good.

If you know of some good software please, leave us a comment with some suggestions. I would recommend reading the steps first and then deciding how simple you want to make it on yourself.

1. You have to record your audio in an MP3 format.
   You can either buy an MP3 recorder to function separately from your computer or you can purchase software for you computer and record your MP3 on it.

   There is a lot of free software out there but, you can also purchase software.
   A very popular and more importantly free choice is Audacity. It’s available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and it includes a number of useful features and plug-ins.

   I, being infinitely cheap and a slave to Windows, use Audacity because it’s easy enough to learn and there are a lot of tutorials on the web to help you learn.

2. Once you have your audio recorded, you need to save this file in a form that will recognize it as a podcast. Most importantly, you want to add items such as title and author to the mp3 format so the person who plays the file will see this information in their display (good place to stick a website reference!). Now you will need to do this before you save the audio file and it is accomplished in Audacity or another mp3 creating program.
3. Next you need to actually publish your podcast and post the feed. The feed is an RSS file that includes a description of your podcast, a link to the corresponding MP3. You can create this file in a number of ways. There is a free RSS-feed generator named TD Scripts.com. Which provides a pretty simple interface but, it is a bit technical.

If you have some web programming experience and some time to spend, you should give some of the free tools a chance. However, if you are not too programming savvy I would default to a “Podcasting Starter Pack” or an equivalent program that has been recommended to you.

I’m going to leave most of the technicalities to the resource section of this article and now jump into a simple way to create and integrate video as a podcast.

The process is essentially identical when working with video, so I will keep the following instructions simple:

There is a lot of different software on the market for producing video. You will be swimming in a hundred options if you go to Google and type in “video editing” or “video creation”.

My advice comes from an old Marine Corps adage.

KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid.

You always want to use baby steps before going out and investine any real money in video software. My starting point is to always use what I’ve already got. Now in this case you probably have either Windows Movie Maker or the Mac equivalent which is significantly easier, more reliable and more extensive. Sadly if you’re using Windows, Movie Maker is quite limited and does have a tendency to crash.

That being said it’s not a bad starting point just remember, SAVE your work!

I’m a programmer and all around computer geek, so I don’t know anything about Macs, except that my brother in-law owns one and puts out excellent quality presentations with no programming or design experience, much to my dismay…

Back to Movie Maker! Now some of the things you can do with Movie Maker are:

1. Import video from your video camera
2. Arrange multiple pictures to play continuously in a movie format.
3. Add sound to the movie.
4. And most importantly put all these together in one movie file.

So this is a good way to make a very simple movie. One thing you will have to concede is flexibility. You have a fairly limited supply of transitions and effects but, for most people they’re enough.

Frankly if you’re ready for full-blown bells and whistles, you need to drop a couple thousand bucks and get Adobe Premier or a few hundred and get Adobe Premier Elements.

One good investment in the making of movies would be a video capture card for your computer. Now these cards do exactly what they say they do, they capture the video from your display, essentially acting as a VCR recorder for your computer.

You’ll also find that you can buy or download free software that records your desktop without a video capture card. Typically, like most technology you get what you pay for. For the most advanced and robust users, it gets pricy and usually complicated but, the good news is that there are free and lower cost software out there that will do the trick for most users.

Let’s talk screen recording for a moment because, that is an effective yet cheap way to produce video.

That means if you wanted to show someone how to search the Internet, you could just “record” yourself searching the Internet and then take your recording into Movie Maker or some other video editing program to jazz it up a bit, and voilá you have a simple tutorial on how to search the Internet.

This is also a great way to record yourself presenting through an application such as PowerPoint.

It’s really only limited by your imagination and ingenuity.

Once you produce a video you should then decide how best to upgrade your software and hardware to produce your target video. Unfortunately, it gets a bit specific at that point and different goals will dictate the level and complexity of the technology needed to accomplish your goal. Please feel free to leave comments with any specific questions.

Some clear and concise resources for learning
the more technical side of podcasting

Well, this has been a short article to get you on your way to podcasting but, you will need more in depth tutorials if you really want to implement podcasting. Here are a few resources that will get you on your way:

http://www.podcasting-tools.com/what-is-podcasting.htm

It’s also not a bad idea to surf around and see what’s popular with people and then emulate the basic structure of what’s working.

Check out: itunes.com and mp3.com to get some ideas…

Thanks and have a great weekend!

Editor, Working IT Out
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

Looking for resources related to this article? Try some of these.

Looking for more of David’s articles? Check these out.

Looking for past issues of The Total Package? Click here for our archives.

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5 Comments »

1. Comment by Bill Caskey — June 2, 2007 @ 11:15 am

   Thanks for podcast article. I have a year\’s worth of experience and one thing I might suggest is to make sure you\’re committed–really committed to an ongoing podcast. We do ours weekly (15 minutes). It gets much easier. However, there will be a time when you want to stop and resume later. Like running a race, once you walk, it\’s hard to get running again. Same thing here. Thanks again for reminding me how important podcasting is becoming. BCaskey

2. Comment by Dave Coyne — June 2, 2007 @ 11:52 am

   Great article. I\’m just starting to explore podcasting for creating audio reports, etc. I tried Audacity but I didn\’t like it that much.

   I now use a program called WebPodStudio by Lionhardt Technologies http://www.lionhardt.ca

   It can be used for both audio and video podcasts and it\’s simple to use. It has a built in telepromptor so you can load your script into and read from the screen rather than shuffling papers.

   One thing I\’d to know more about is computer sound cards and what\’s good for podcasting. I always find I really have to crank the volume to the max to make a barely audible recording.

   Regards,
   Dave Coyne

3. Comment by David Dittman — June 2, 2007 @ 2:25 pm

   Great point Bill, podcasting can be a huge commitment depending on how frequently you want to post. I think it makes the most sense to start small, may be even monthly. You can always work into a more frequent podcast once you’re ahead a bit with content and comfortable with how long the prep work takes. Thank you for the great comments! I’m not too sure about the best sound cards out there so I’m hoping the readers can help us out with their comments.

4. Comment by Scott Paton — June 2, 2007 @ 9:40 pm

   Audacity is what I use mostly. I have been podcasting for over 2 years now. I do a \’Weight Loss and The Mind\’ podcast with over 85,000 subscribers and 450,000 downloads over the past 12 months.

   One day soon if you don\’t podcast, people will look at you the same way they do now when you say you don\’t have an email newsletter :^)

   I recommend 15 minutes a week. Short but regular. It is still a novelty and the competition is low, BUT watch that change over the next year. I remember speaking to group of 500 people for the Internet Marketing Center about Blogs and only having a few hands go up, now everyone has a few blogs, it seems.

   Well, podcasting is going the same way.

   Thanks
   Scott Paton
   Dean of Blogonomics and Podology
   [CODE]http://www.thepodcastbootcamp.com [/CODE]

5. Comment by Glen Kohlenberg — June 3, 2007 @ 7:30 am

   Great article David,
   I am a newby in podcasting and have found that Mike Stewart from Internet Audio Guy had a list of Sony products that works great.Fantastic support also.