Podcasting as a promotional tool

Enough of blogs! What about podcasting as a promotional tool?
I read that Virgin Atlantic is offering free podcasts to customers with content relevant to the Virgin routes. The first 4 podcasts are New York audio guides - produced by Loudish.com. As a radio producer I find this an interesting development.

The BBC is already podcasting many programmes. Highlights of the Today programme and From our own Correspondent. In fact the fantastic Peter Day devoted the whole of an edition of In Business to PodCasting back in May: listen again.

I’m planning a trip to the The Portable Media Expo conference in California in November. It's the first conference to examine podcasting – covering the complete range of business and marketing issues that must be addressed for podcasting, time-shifted media and portable content.

There is plenty of scope for the use of podcasting to enghance the BBC’s programme output:

• Reach new audiences:
  Podcasting provides opportunities to connect with new, hard to reach audiences. American research indicates that minority groups are more likely to own iPods/MP3 players than whites (16% of African Americans and Latinos compared to 9% of non-Latino whites in the US - Pew / Internet).
• New distribution opportunities:
  According to the US research - IPods/MP3 players are gadgets for well-off, 18% of those earning more than $75,000 own one (Pew / Internet). This provides an opportunity for some programmes / departments to connect with this upscale audience. For example – The Financial World tonight is broadcast on BBC Radio 5-Live, having previously on BBC Radio 4. It sits uncomfortably on the network. Would it make more sense to broadcast FWT as the programme of financial record as a podcast?
• New content for additional services and programme material
  Podcasting provides an opportunity to create additional content for audiences. This has not yet been explored; currently the BBC provides copies of programmes as broadcast for podcasts. There is a creative opportunity to look at what else could be provided – longer versions of interviews for speech programmes, artist profiles for music networks or a weekly digest for busy people who don’t catch a daily strand?

But the promotional aspects are fascinating. I’ve produced programmes for corporate radio which was delivered over phones and networked PC’s. This allowed staff to hear lively accessible content at their desktops – this kind of corporate broadcasting could adapt well to the iPod, and indeed the Virgin scheme which adds value in a way which complements the corporate offering is a very good idea. I wonder what other applications there could be for commercial podacsts – and if there’s a business in it for a BBC producer?
:-)
Matt

Comments

[Health News]

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