Mario Sundar's Speakeasy

This is a continuation of my earlier post where I gave an overview of the state of Corporate Podcasting and an example of a Fortune 500 company that’s tried it out successfully

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If you’re wondering how to get started on Corporate Podcasting for your corporate marketing team, here are the 3 stages:

Stage 1: Questions to ask your marketing team
Stage 2: 9 Steps to Corporate Podcasting
Stage 3: 5 Things to remember

Stage 1: Questions to ask

1. Is podcasting appropriate for your target audience? Don’t just do it because everyone’s doing it.
2. If YES, check if your marketing communications (marcom) plan permits it. Does your team have the time to plan, record, edit, publish, and promote podcasts? Do you have the budgets to pursue it?
3. If YES, integrate podcasting into your marcom mix, plan accordingly and pursue it aggressively.
4. Now the question that most smart marketers will ask “what is the ROI of Podcasts?” My take is, do you calculate the ROI of a brochure? or the ROI of a white paper? If you do, then apply the same rule to a corporate podcast
5. Also, evaluate which components of your existing marcom mix permit the integration of a corporate podcast most easily?

Most corporate communications include tons of collateral that can be very well converted to a much more compelling podcast. Of particular interest should be the Q&A type collateral – think success stories, case studies, investor relations, etc…

Stage 2: The 9 Steps of Corporate Podcasting

I chanced upon this great post on podcasting for librarians. Interesting how similar the process is to creating corporate podcasts: Here are the 9 steps:

1. determine content and format
2. assemble equipment and people
3. record
4. edit and export to mp3
5. listen!
6. upload file to server
7. generate your RSS feed (which is what makes it a podcast)
8. publish feed URL
9. promote. respond. repeat. (need to provide a way for people to give you feedback about it and then you need to respond)

Source: the Shifted Librarian

Stage 3: 5 Things to remember

1. RSS compatible (without RSS it’s just an audio file — not a podcast)
2. Keep It Short & Simple: The average user prefers anything between 5 – 10 minutes. (Source: Universal McCann – Knowledge Storm Survey)
3. Background music: Select a musical piece for your intro and outro and stick to it. It defines the brand of your podcast.
4. Voice over:

a. Interviewee: Single voice (yet again, defines the brand of your podcast)
b. Interviewed: Multiple voices helps engage the user

5. Allow for comments: Definitely the single most important aspect to engage the audience.

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