THE COMMANDMENTS OF BUSINESS PODCASTING - PART I
In the August 16, 2006 edition of marketingonline.com podcast, we were treated to a summary of the first five of ten commandments of good podcasting.
We were told that commandment number 1 was, "Thou shall ask thy audience". Essentially, we were advised that we need to turn the business methodology around, whereby the message is not necessarily coming from you rather it is being framed by your clients, listeners and consumers. Essentially, the market creates the message. The fact is, with digital techonology, as the podcasters remind us, we can find out what people want relatively quickly and we can respond to that request in a timely manner.
The second commandment is, "Thou shall know your audience". When starting a podcast and looking for a relevant audience, you really must understand who you are talking to. In the course of asking and knowing, you begin to understand what is important to your audience and why it is important to them. It is only at that point that you can give your audience appropriate content.
The third commandment is, "Thou shall match methods to market". As was noted by the podcastrs, unless you know who your audience is, and what they want and how they want it, you are not going to be able to convert your message into what they describe as "wallet-share".
The fourth commandment is, "Thou shall repurpose when possible". For example, Hollywood relies on a large part of their sales revenue through the repurposed venue of DVDs. The podcasters go on to remind us that podcasting itself is an excellent venue for the repurposing model. The podcast can be used as essentially the second or third stage of the repurposing DVD example as noted above.
The fifth commandment is described as, "Thou shall separate channel from medium". The proper definition of what channel means and what medium means was clarified; channel is the technology and the medium is the format. For example, the channel is the technology which records a seminar to transform it into the medium which is a teleseminar. The key is that these two things interchange just as you can see a movie and then send it down into different feed channels, such as a DVD format.
We will be listening for future podcasts from marketingonline.com to report on the remaining five commandments.
All the best, Ian and Suzana.
