Thinking about podcasts

Because I am truly a podcast novice, I spent some time looking online for best practices. Below are some of the more interesting points I found, in case they are useful for anyone else:

• Unless visuals are necessary or valuable for the message, they should be avoided, becase many listeners like to be able to do other things (e.g., driving, exercising, etc.) while listening.

• Communication goals, message strategy and target audience should inform the length of the podcast.

• Sound quality should be as high as possible; static and background noise is very noticeable to listeners using earbuds. 

• Practice several times to get comfortable with the topic, the microphone, etc. 

• Maintain a consistent distance between your mouth and the microphone.

• Edit, edit, edit the audio file to get all the pauses and ums out

I also found this quote in a podcasting guidance document from the CDC, which addresses some of what we discussed in last week's MOO, regarding listener engagement and call to action. 

"Despite its classification as a Web 2.0 technology, podcasting still retains some 1.0 characteristics. For instance, podcast messages are crafted, produced, and broadcast with little to no audience participation or personalization inherent in many other Web. 2.0 technologies. One way to increase audience engagement is to actively solicit audience participation and use audience feedback. Methods include answering audience emails, receiving and recording audience phone calls, receiving questions and comments from listeners in audio files, etc."

A Couple Irritating Things I Noticed

After spending some time sampling, it became very obvious that podcasts are just like websites: they cover every imaginable topic in every imaginable form, and with great variation in quality and professionalism. I developed some new podcast pet peeves, and here they are:

• Overly-long introductions -- most podcasts opened with a little snippet of music and and a canned voiceover introduction. A surprising number of them were WAY too long

• Robotic speaking -- spend about three minutes listening to the podcasts on blog.salesopedia.com, and you will be driven completely insane. 

• Inane banter -- probably needs no further explanation

Podcasts that I Liked

I searched primarily for ways to use podcasting to teach sales techniques, product features, and terminology. Here are two that I enjoyed. 

• askasalesquestion.com/podcast -- each podcast covers one sales question, with the whole question itself being the title of the file (which was very helpful). Audio quality is excellent, and the speakers cover the material very concisely, but don't sound robotic.  
  
• Princeton Review Vocabulary Minute -- Aimed at high school students, these are charming, somewhat addictive little songs that teach new vocabulary words. I was especially fond of Party, Hollywood Girls, and Quiescent Night