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Article
"The Power of Marketing Podcasts" By Robert Moment
If youve used the Internet at all this year, youíve probably heard of
podcasting. Its the one word thatís almost guaranteed to come up in
discussions of small business marketing, and with good reason too:
podcasting has become more and more popular over the past 12 months, and is
set to become the most powerful marketing tool of the future. But what
exactly is it?
What are marketing podcasts?
In simple terms, podcasts are like radio transmissions which are broadcast
over the Internet and subscribed to by listeners who subscribe to an RSS or
Atom feed and listen either over their computer or via hand-held devices
such as iPods. Theyre a little like a blog and a little like radio ñ and
theyíre starting to take off in a big way.
In marketing terms, podcasting presents a new and very powerful method of
communicating directly with your clients, both current and prospective.
What are marketing podcasts about?
The simple answer to this question is that a marketing podcast can be about
anything and everything you think will be of interest to your listeners.
You may want to talk about a new innovation youíre using in your business,
interview some of your industry leaders or discuss some of the big issues in
your area of the business world. The choices are endless, and itís up to
you to use your imagination to come up with something people will be
interested in hearing.
There are many different ways in which marketing podcasts can help benefit
your business . Here are just a few of them.
Marketing podcasts help build tangibility
By creating a podcast you let your listeners/customers see the real you- the
people behind the business. This helps give your business some kind of
tangibility and personality: rather than just being a faceless corporation,
your business becomes something your customers/listeners can relate to and
understand.
Marketing podcasts increase your credibility
By offering a podcast on a particular subject, youíre establishing yourself
as an expert in that subject . People like to buy from experts ñ podcasting
helps build trust and, by extension, grows sales.
Marketing podcasts add value to your business
By offering a podcast, youíre giving visitors to your website something
free- and something which theyíll hopefully enjoy enough to want to hear
more of. This means that theyíll become repeat visitors, and may even turn
into customers.
Podcasts build loyalty
In the same way that email newsletters build loyalty towards your business
by providing free information to subscribers, marketing podcasts work in
much the same way. As you start to build up a listener base for your
podcasts, youíll be creating your own form of word-of-mouth advertising as
your listeners tell other people about your podcasts and your business.
Getting started in marketing podcasting
Creating a podcast is surprising simple. In terms of hardware, all youíll
need is a computer, mic and broadband connection. Simple, free pieces of
software such as audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) allow you to
record it, then itís a matter of saving the file as .MP 3 and uploading it
to your server.
Once uploaded, your podcast is ready to be distributed, and this can be done
through aggregators such as iPodder (www.ipodder.org ) and FeedDemon
(www.feeddemon.com ) or via web-based directories such as Podcast Alley
(www.podcastalley.com) and BlastPodcast (www.blastpodcast.com) .
According to a recent survey by Pew Internet and American Life poll, around
22 million Americans own MP3 players or iPods. Those figures perhaps help
to explain the growing popularity of podcasts: audio blogs or radio shows
distributed by RSS and used as a new, and highly effective , form of
marketing. This article explains the benefits of marketing podcasts, and
gives a brief guide on how to get started.
Robert Moment is a business strategist and author of ìIt Only Takes a Moment
to Scoreî found on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. Robert shows
entrepreneurs how to turn ideas into wealth, how to avoid becoming a
statistic and have FUN ! Download the FREE Special Report , 17 Profitable
Ways to Turn Your Ideas into Money at http://www.sellintegrity.com
