If you’re still not sure what a podcast is don’t feel bad. You are one of millions of intelligent, informed people who are missing this piece of the New Media puzzle. Having excused you, now permit me to chastise you. All businesspeople should know what a podcast is, especially considering there are tens of thousands of them and their legions of listeners are growing. Podcasting can also be very beneficial to your company or you as a business professional. Here’s why…
If you’re still not sure what a podcast is don’t feel bad. You are one of millions of intelligent, informed people who are missing this piece of the New Media puzzle
Having excused you, now permit me to chastise you. All businesspeople should know what a podcast is, especially considering there are tens of thousands of them and their legions of listeners are growing. Podcasting can also be very beneficial to your company or you as a business professional.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First, a few basics.
Podcasts are audio files, mostly composed of people talking and often including music and sound effects. They can be downloaded and listened to on a computer, or transferred to your iPod (hence the “pod”-cast name) or other MP3 player. The vast majority of podcasts are free of charge through iTunes, Podcast Alley and other outlets.
To give you some idea, I subscribe to more than a dozen podcasts that range from audio versions of TV programs such as Meet the Press and Face the Nation, to National Public Radio interview programs Fresh Air and The Diane Rehm Show, to academic and business programming like the Harvard Business IdeaCast, the McKinsey Quarterly Podcasts and news summaries from The Economist magazine.
It’s great stuff.
Podcasts are convenient because they can be listened to while driving, pumping iron at the gym, hiking, zipping to the office on the train, sitting on your sofa or dozing in bed at night (one of my favorite ways to enter the Land of Nod).
That’s one of the big advantages audio podcasts have over video – they require one rather than two senses, meaning they don’t require your undivided attention. You can listen to audio while participating in any number of activities. It’s probably not a good idea to watch a video while you’re riding a horse or trying to stay balanced on a treadmill.
All one need do is check out some of the organizations that podcast to realize its value and implications. There’s the legendary consulting firm of McKinsey & Co, accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers and academic icon HarvardBusinessSchool. Why do these organizations podcast?
Here are just seven good reasons.
Display expertise. When McKinsey & Co. conducted its annual global survey of business spending on Web 2.0 technologies, it not only released a written report, it produced a podcast consisting of an interview with one of the research report’s authors. Another example is a podcast titled Connecting climate change and economic recovery, featuring an interview with economist Nicholas Stern.
Display leadership. HarvardBusinessSchoolhas used its IdeaCast to tackle subjects that have included:
Educate. The Britain-based podcast The Naked Scientists uses British humor and interesting topics to teach people about scientific and technological breakthroughs. Some recent subjects were:
Provide value. Grammar Girl and her brief 10-minute podcasts have become widely popular in part because of publicity she has received in magazines such as Business Week. But she has sustained that audience by giving them valuable information pertaining to the proper use of grammar. Who doesn’t want to sound like they didn’t fall asleep in English class? People who don’t want to sound like they speak English as a second language. And there are lots of those.
Brand your company. If you’re British Petroleum and you’re trying to position yourself as a forward-thinking company, wouldn’t producing podcasts about clean and sustainable forms of energy help immensely to burnish your image as a company operating in future tense?
Brand yourself. If you’re the brilliant management consultant or life coach you claim to be, prove it with a weekly or monthly podcast with a snappy title. Consider how much credence would be lent to your reputation by podcasts that offer terrific advice and success stories about your own clients?
Connect with key players. Imagine you’re a regional bank that wants to reach out to key players in your market. Rather than your standard sales letter or cold call, what if you invited your target to be featured on the bank’s CEO Spotlight podcast? Now the CEO can share his or her wisdom and is likely to be flattered by the invitation. You get a face-to-face interview out of the deal and the start of a personal relationship that could be parlayed into a client relationship, if you play your cards right. The caveat, of course, is that no one will be interested in subscribing to your podcast unless you provide interesting and educational content. So don’t make the mistake of using it strictly as a relationship building tool.
How to end your speech, William Penn style
The two most important parts of our speech are the start and the finish. But most of us spend a lot more time concentrating on how to open our speech rather than how to end it. That’s a mistake because the end of our speech is our chance to give audience members something to walk away with. One of the people who offered words of wisdom about how to properly end a speech is the great William Penn, a man who gave innumerable speeches during his lifetime. Here’s what William Penn had to say about ending a speech…
Punctuate your public speaking by pausing
One of the common exhortations of speaking coaches is to put a period at the end of each sentence. That is accomplished by briefly pausing at the end of each sentence. Indeed, the pause serves as various punctuation marks, based on its duration. A very brief pause has the effect of a comma, breaking a sentence into its parts or clauses. A longer pause has the effect of a period. A long pause, depending on the context, acts as an exclamation point.
If your company had a personality, what would it be?
Have you ever considered creating a personality for your company? Giving it human characteristics that consumers and business customers can more easily and meaningfully relate to? Let’s boil this down to a simple consideration. If your company was a human being what type of personality would it possess? Here are some examples of companies that have developed personalities, as well as characteristics to consider in developing your own company’s personality…
