You’ve probably heard of podcasting, but do you know why it’s important? This powerful communication tool is being adopted faster than any other broadcast media in history. Having a good podcast strategy can ensure you’re keeping current and leveraging the most effective media tools to build deeper relationships with your target audience.

Engage Your Audience

Having greater reach and more direct touch points with your audience is something every communication strategy aims to achieve. Podcasts provide a direct communications link to an global audience with next to no incremental cost. Taking a small amount of time to develop a podcast strategy can result in a new communications channel that engages a world-wide audience.

A podcast strategy can also leverage all the social tools on the Internet to encourage interaction and engage your audience on a deeper level. Users can do more than tune-in to a podcast. They can follow links, give feedback, pause or rewind, share content, or engage in many other ways. With a good podcast strategy, you can monitor your user engagement and respond to it quickly.

Build Trust

You already know that trust is essential for effective communications. Like Radio and TV, podcasts are publicly broadcasted rich media and carry more credibility than press releases, lectures, emails, or most other common communication tools. Podcasts put the persuasive power associated with a global broadcast at your disposal.

A podcast is delivered to users whenever they’re ready and choose to play it. A person who receives information through a podcast is more empowered than a person who receives the same information in a presentation, flier, or by other traditional means. Podcasts give your audience more control over their experience, which helps build greater trust between you and your users.

Be Relevant

Web 2.0 is a reality. If you’re not familiar with terms like “social media”, “blog”, or “podcast”, you’re quickly losing touch with the standard tools people are using to communicate. With hundreds of thousands of podcasters, and over 18 million regular podcast users in the USA, podcasting is becoming an important part of the Web 2.0 world.

Podcasting also presents relevant content to your audience. People who listen to or watch podcasts do so because they want to. With a solid podcast strategy, you can deliver messages that are in-line with your goals, and draw in an audience that already sees a benefit in what you are saying.

If you think podcasting is only relevant for teenagers and Silicon Valley tech start-ups, think again. Libraries, hospitals, local retailers, fortune 500 companies, universities, professors, police departments, fitness trainers, authors, or just about any organization with a need to communicate in the modern world can use podcasting, and in a great many cases already are. Podcast strategies can be powerful, competitive, and a lot easier to implement than you might have ever imagined.

Feel free to send me an email if you have questions about how you could implement a podcast strategy. My email is rian [at] dailysplice.com.

So the 3G iPhone is all the buzz this week, as is anything Steve Jobs touches. But what does it mean for podcasting?

Let me start my prediction by saying podcasting, as it is right now, in my opinion is not mobile.  “What?? The whole idea is that you download it and take it with you… isn’t that as mobile as it gets?”

Well, not really. Last I checked, about half the people listening to podcasts are listening direct off the website.  That means they are connected to the Internet, which means they are very likely sitting down in front of their computer, which means they are not moving around.

Podcasts are more valuable on the go, there is no question about that, and I’d be willing to bet most of those people sitting in front of their computer watching the progress bar move along while they enjoy their podcast would probably rather listen to that show on the bus or on a run or wherever else.

People don’t take them on the go because it’s a pain to get them onto their iPod. By “it’s a pain” I mean you have to do something. Even if that something is simply plug your iPod in and wait for the new files to transfer, it is something, and these days “something” is a pain.

What the first iPhone represented was the arrival of the long awaited mobile web in North America. What I think this 3G iPhone will represent is real access to the mobile web in North America. By that I mean the speed will start to go up and the data prices will start to come down.

So then comes my prediction. Not only will it be easier to syc your podcasts up automatically, it will also become easier to stream them on the go.  This will take away the pain of taking your podcasts to go, but it will also take away the limitations of the RSS feed with media enclosure rule. We might see “mediacasts” being aggrigated on the fly and streamed from various parts of the web instead of being placed on your device.

So I guess I’m kind of predicting that the 3G iPhone, in terms of what it represents in the media delivery timeline, could kill the “podcast” in favor of “mediacasts” that include things like YouTube videos that arn’t meant to ever be downloaded.

So if it happens, let me say you heard it here first. If it doesn’t then lets just forget this post ever happened. =)

Microsoft says podcasting is important for corporations, and it’s released a test version of a new podcasting tool as an add on for SharePoint. A lot of people were covering the story this week. Here’s a couple of links:

• http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1436
• http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Apps/Microsoft-Open-Sources-Podcasting-Software/

I think its a good thing. What do you think?

These videos from Common Craft are always pretty good, and recently they made one for podcasting. Finally, when someone asks me what a podcast is I have something good to point them to!! Here it is:

There’s an interesting phenomenon on YouTube. It’s a popular genre videos that consists of absolutly horrible and/or pointless videos. Some of the masters of this genre include:

DaxFlame: Retarded or Resmarted?

Chris Crocker: You’d cry too.

Magibon: Just look at me… Literally.

Mr. Pregnant: So horrible, you can not look away!

I got to thinking, where is the genre in podcasting? I listen to a lot of podcasts and I’ve yet to come across a podcaster who’s claim to fame is being awful. There are of course, awful podcasts (ours may very well be one of those!) but I don’t know of anyone who is so bad they are good.

Why is this? Here’s my thoughts:

In order for bad content to become popular, it’s got to be viral. When it comes to the viral effect, it really doesn’t matter if content is bad or good, it’s just got to envoke some kind of feedback. That could be in the form of a rating (good or bad), a comment (adoring or nasty), or with a link (”check out this hilarious guy” or “check out this moron”).

So my conclusion is that podcasts must not be viral. When was the last time you sent an episode of a podcast to a friend? When is the last time you rated a podcast? When is the last time you commented on a podcast? I listen to tons of great podcast every day, but I rarely send them to anyone, rarely comment, and never rate them. It’s just not easy enough.

The content defiantly has the potential to be viral, but the infrastructure isn’t there to make it viral. At least for the time being. Where is the link in iTunes that lets you quickly send it to a friend? Why can’t I rate a podcast directly from my iTunes podcast panel and have that rating get reported in the store? Why can’t I comment directly in iTunes? Imagine how much easier it would be to find great podcasts (or crappy ones) if you could do all this in iTunes as easily as you can on YouTube!

I kind of see podcasts as this big ball of energy just waiting to be released. Someone is eventually going to come along with a site that has all the right wiring in place for viral activity in podcasts, and some blogger will come along and hurd the sheep and bam! Podcasts will be everywhere overnight.

Until then though, if you want to become famous for being an idiot don’t distribute your content with RSS.

Well here’s Wikipedia’s definition. Here’s About.com’s answer. Here is what Dictionary.com has to say. And of course, here’s the classic definition from Ask a Ninja:

Now, I’m not just trying to be facetious, but I think the Ninja’s definition is the only one that captures the true meaning of podcasting. The dictionary suggests that you’ve got to have web-based audio on an RSS feed and you have to distribute it to subscribers to say you have a “podcast.” About’s definition is a little more loose, saying it need’s only to an audio file on an RSS feed, also mentioning that the RSS feed is just a means to “broadcast” the audio over the Internet. Wikipedia’s broadens the definition even more by saying it’s just got to be a digital-media file on a syndication feed.What all these definitions lack is the concept of repeated publications; the “factory” in the Ninja’s definition. If someone made a weekly media update of his travels around the world and sent it out to anyone who asked for it every Friday at 12:01am via an automated email mailing list… that would fail all the formal definitions. But the Ninja would say that someone is publishing some interesting media and distributing it on a regular basis over the Internet, so it’s a podcast. And I’d have to agree.

Here’s an example of a student who recorded a single interview session as a class project, listed it in a xml file dedicated solely to that mp3, and submit it into our directory without the intention of ever releasing any other episode. According to the formal definitions, that’s a podcast. The Ninja would probably call that “brine,” and I would tend to agree with the him again. That is not a podcast.

The formal definitions get deep into the technical requirements of a podcast and ignore the true concept of what makes a podcast a podcast. Unfortunately, computer’s have a lot easier time understanding technical definitions, and so the formal definitions also define what directories will call podcasts… including DailySplice. The problem we’re having is the same problem all the other directories have, we don’t really have a “podcast directory,” we have a directory of xml documents that contain media enclosures. If you wrap your media file in an RSS feed like the above mentioned student did, we’ll list it.

What we can do though is analyze the publishing habits of a “podcaster” and, over time, determine if that RSS feed is really a podcast or just an mp3 file wrapped into an xml document. This is exactly what we try to do. Our podcasts are ordered by something we call “PodRank,” which, in part, is a measure the “podcastness” of an RSS feed based on the non-technical aspects of what constitutes a true podcast.

Of course, as soon as you steer away from the formal technical definitions you start to get a lot of grey area and everyone starts to develop their own opinions. One of our goals is to make it easy for you to find podcasts that match your own criteria. Our advanced search is one feature we’ve included on our site to help make this possible. Here you can define criteria like number of episodes per week or average duration to ensure search results meet your own definition. Please leave feedback on how this is working for you and what factors you think are most important. We look forward to bring you the most real “podcast” directory soon!

So one of the big stories I noticed this week was the release of Adobe’s media player. It looks slick, but what does it mean for podcasters? Well, Wizzard digs it, and we all know Wizzard is the lastest hot stuff in the podcasting industry. We had a look at it as well because we are working on some player ideas. Let me steal a rant from our CTO, Lewis Sobotkiewicz, who doesn’t think it means much to us podcasters:

…It looks like they’re focusing heavily on video, not so much on audio. It can’t load .AVI or .MPG files off of my hard drive, which is what all my personal videos are encoded as. I’ve read on the net that it can’t play back H.264+AAC files. That would be unfortunate for podcasters because that’s how video podcasts are encoded. Podcasters aren’t going to spend the extra $400 to buy Flash so they can encode as .FLV.

I have no idea where downloaded episodes are saved. They go to some mysterious folder on my hard drive, and I have no idea how to get rid of them.

And yes, their interface is very slick and easy to use. I, like everyone, love crossfading transitions, but that’s not enough to convince me to download this thing so I can watch 3 episode of CSI New York. That’s the only thing they seem to be adding to the already full media player bandwagon. My impression is that Adobe has a lot of work to do before this gets widespread adoption.

So there you have it. Maybe it’s not all that hot if you’re a podcaster. It was just released the other day though, so we’ll see how it pans out for us.

Many non-techie’s are confused when I tell them what a podcast is, or that podcasts offer them anything of interest. People believe that podcasts are too obscure or complicated to use. A few years ago, I shared that skepticism as well. Getting into the music podcasts helped me shed that limiting belief.

The term podcast is unfortunate in some ways because it takes some explanation to tell someone what a podcast is and how it works, although most of the concepts have been used for decades in radio and TV. Podcasts have a reputation for being “techie”, which obfuscates the good, (non-techie) content they offer. Syndicated programs have been produced for many years. Our grandparents may have listened to Fibber McGee and Molly, one of the classic and most recognizable radio syndications of all time. The only substantial difference with podcasts is the way they’re distributed.

So there’s confusion. I’m sure there’s something for everyone available these days. Podcasting is growing at an unprecedented rate. All it takes is a hearty search! For example, my family recently went on a trip to Mexico. Before she left, my cousin wanted to learn some beginner Spanish. Sounds like a job for SpanishPod! For me, it was music that helped me cross the hurdle; I was looking for new ways to listen to obscure independent music. There was the radio of course, but I don’t carry one around with me. Further, the radio has little I want to listen to. Celine Dion? No thanks.

There is the opinion that podcasts are better suited for news, shows, and frequently updated content. Services like news and weather are updated regularly, and previous episodes lose relevance quickly. Who cares about last month’s CBC World At Six, after all. Music, by contrast, doesn’t become obsolete when a new episode is released.

I believe music will be an important catalyst for getting more and more people to adopt podcasts. The drawback is that most of it will be unfamiliar to listeners. People who expect to hear mainstream music from a podcast are going to be disappointed (for now at least). Regardless, there is enough great indie music available to draw in anyone who manages to listen for a few minutes.

I am always looking for ways to familiarize people with podcasts and methods to ease adoption.

By the way, if you are interested in old-timey radio, including Fibber McGee and Molly, check out http://boxcars711.podomatic.com