To
facilitate the Community Day podstorming session I broke the topic down in to
smaller components. Each component was
presented as a question. What follows is
a brief summary of the main components we covered.
What are the benefits of producing a
podcast?
In Is
Anybody Listening pt I I presented a fairly exhaustive list
of the benefits of producing a corporate podcast. We didn’t expand on this list although I’ll
recap on the primary benefits that we highlighted during our session:
- Raise individual and company
profile as a recognised expert to a wider audience
- Reinforce our position as
innovators
- Don't talk the talk if you
can't walk the walk i.e. demonstrate our expertise.
- Demonstrate thought leadership
- Eat our own dog food – if we are
such podcast evangelists then why aren’t we using them?
We also
identified several benefits to the team: -
- Improve exposure and experience
of podcasting by becoming more than just a listener
- Improve communication skills
- Learn from our colleagues/ internal
subject matter experts
Who is the target audience for the
podcast?
We
identified a diverse potential audience: -
- Existing clients
- Potential clients
- Peers
- Press
- Competitors
- Students
- Job-seekers
- 3rd parties/
suppliers
- Randoms (interesting label! I
guess that covers those that are unclassifiable)
What are the blockers to producing a
podcast?
1) What
would the possible impact of the podcast be on the Conchango brand if it wasn’t
done well? Do we need to add a process
after the production to review content and apply some form of quality control?
We covered
this at length but concluded that our consultants are suitably professional,
expert in their subject matter and take pride in all their outputs so much so that
we do not anticipate any issues around quality.
2) How do
we ensure some continuity when the shows host’s availability is
unpredictable?
For
example, what if the host’s next role requires them to relocate to the
States? Can the podcast be hosted
remotely? Can we use a stand-in host without losing the fluidity or personality
of the podcast?
This needs
to be built in to our podshow format so that we are able to continue
effectively if one of our hosts is not available.
3) Can we
keep the Interactive Media team podcast going in the long-term? The main issues were: -
- Workload – for Consultants
there’s never enough hours in the day.
- Enthusiasm – can we keep the
enthusiasm going for creating the podshow
Producing a
podcast is not that time consuming and there are enough of us in the team to cover for anyone who doesn’t have time that episode. As for enthusiasm, this is something the team
has in abundance so no problem there.
How much time does it take to plan,
prepare and produce a podshow?
Well,
that’s a difficult one. Time and effort
can be broken down in to 3 distinct activities – preparation, recording and
post-production. It’s up to us how much
time we put in to preparation and post-production. The more we put in the more
we should get out of it.
A very
rough guide is as follows: - for a 20 minute podcast, I suggest we look to
spend around 3 hours’ preparation and 2 hours post-production. Add to this 20-30 minutes recording the
podcast. I recommend recording
the podcast in a single take. As we
become more expert in podcasting then we’ll obviously take less time.
Does the team have time to produce a podcast?
We bounced
around this subject for a while but concluded that the team will need to invest
some personal time to keeping this podcast going, but that this wouldn’t prove
a problem given the team’s enthusiasm and drive. Several ideas to support the team further
included: -
- Secure Investment Time
- Prepare, record and produce the
podcast at our Community Day to minimise personal time invested
- Recognition for dedication to
podcasting
- Make the podcast
rewarding. For example,
interviewing inspirational and expert guest speakers.
What is the subject matter and what
segments would we have in each episode?
We only
touched on the podshow content but Web 2.0 was most popular subject matter,
based on our team’s expertise and given that this subject would make use of the
wide range of skills & knowledge within the Interactive Media team and the
company as a whole.
We didn’t
cover the podshow segments but I acknowledge that I mentioned jingle at least a dozen times so there’s
at least one segment. We have an
impressive network of subject matter experts so we should definitely take
advantage of this and host a regular 5-10 minute Interview Slot. What’s New
was also popular – a 2 minute segment around what’s new and exciting in Web 2.0.
What about www.conchango.com?
This issue
kept coming up again and again. www.conchango.com does not reflect the brand
or come close to demonstrating our company’s achievements or expertise. If we regard the podcast as part of our
overall marketing mix then we need to get the web site sorted. This site redesign is currently in progress but
this needs to be moved along quickly. As
the podcast reaches our target audience, traffic will inevitably be pushed to
our web site so let’s give them a total marketing solution.
When will the podcast launch?
Jan
2007. This gives us time to rehearse and
do a soft launch internally. It also means that the new look web site should be
live by then.
Next Steps
The next
step is a follow-up podstorming session to agree the podshow details. I’ll be arranging this follow-up session over
the next few weeks.
I’ll also
be looking at setting up an Internal Podcast to disseminate information to our
employees. What would be in this
podcast?
- Presentations
- Announcements
- Business updates
- Newsletters
- Talks from Community day
- Training
- Executive speeches
- Or something simple like a
Seasonal Greeting from our Directors.
It will be interesting
to hear what you think about this? And
whether you have experience of using pocasts to disseminate information
internally?