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Have You Thought About Podcasting As A Marketing Strategy?
Sunday, August 13th, 2006We all are aware of the tremendous impact of blogs in the internet marketing world. With all the features it possesses, blogs have become potent weapons in securing favorable positions in search engine results. Furthermore, blogs are simplified content management systems that make web publishing a breeze. To add to the foregoing, blogs also have an interconnectivity that can bring a new audience for your showcases.
But everyone, it seems, have hopped aboard the blogging bandwagon. Soon enough, the novelty of blogs will wear off, and people may develop a blindness for them.
What’s needed to be done?
New methods of blogging have to be developed to preserve the distinct appeal of blogs as social and marketing tools.
One of these methods is podcasting.
What is podcasting?
Podcasting as a term traces its roots from two words: podcasts and broadcasting. Simply put, podcasting is the broadcasting of podcasts.
A podcast is an audio recording formatted like a radio show. This allows great latitude of possibilities. You can conduct interviews, present your views on certain matters, create your own radio drama, come up with your own brand of entertainment, and you can share whatever you will create with people who will get to visit your blog.
Podcasts have become natural extensions of many blogs. It’s a way of elevating blogging to the next level. Blogs do have a more personal feel compared to other online mediums. And podcasts will give such a feel a voice, your voice, for all your readers/listeners to hear.
I’m Sold! But What Are The Marketing Uses For Podcasts?
Podcasts can be used for a variety of marketing purposes. Let’s take a look at some of them:
* Podcasts can become the audio counterpart of e-courses. You can conduct lessons through the audio recordings you can offer via download.
* Podcasts make great manuals for the digital products you are selling.
* Podcasts make great testimonials to increase the credibility of your business and the likelihood of winning the trust of your prospects.
* Podcasts can become great hooks to lure in a lot of visitors and eventual leads. Episodic podcasts, for example, will require your listeners to visit your blog regularly, least they miss out on a new chapter of your audio adventures.
* Podcats can serve as your products. You can sell them as they are. You can offer a subscription to gain access to your audio episodes. Or you can sell the private label rights for the podcasts you have developed.
* You can earn directly from your podcast by allowing some parties to advertise within your episodes. A good example of this would be www.fruitcast.com which will offer to host your podcasts under the condition that they will include a line or two of advertising material. You’d then be paid every time your podcast is downloaded.
* There is a huge market for podcasts. Basically, you will be targeting the 28 million owners of portable mp3 players in the US, and the 65 million portable mp3 player owners in the world. These people are always looking for something to download and sync with their mo3 players which they can listen to while on the road. Podcasts offer a great alternative, compared to the music files that are widely available.
How Can I Make My Own Podcast?
Creating your own podcast is easy. All you need is a recording device and a mike. Chances are, your operating system already has a built-in recording program. If you wish to edit your recordings, you can use third party programs that can even allow you to integrate music to your prerecorded voice.
You have to make sure that your podcast is recorded in .mp3 format for it to serve its purpose.
Thereafter, all that is left to be done is to upload it on a web hosting server. This can be your own web host or any of the file storage websites popular these days.
Marketing your podcast will be the next logical step, of course. But as they say, that’s a story for another day.
