Can You Afford NOT to Be Podcasting?

Podcasts. “Sure, I know what they are….I think.” Sound familiar?

Podcasts have been around for over a dozen years, and while adoption is growing by double digits, they’re often overshadowed by social media, videos, infographics and search engine optimization. That said, podcasts are quietly and steadily gaining traction and businesses and financial professionals like you. "The popularity of podcasting for business makes perfect sense,” according to Daryl Plotke, of the Gainesville, Florida-based creative agency DDP. “Not only do podcasts allow the brand to have complete control over its content, but they offer an intimacy that few other media channels provide.”

*** See how we’re turning our own blog posts into podcasts. It’s surprisingly simple and effective and so can you.

More than one in five Americans over age 12 (21%) have listened to a podcast in the past month and that “ear-share” has increased by about 25 percent in the past year alone. That’s about 57 million people listening to podcasts regularly--about the same number of folks who are tweeting.

Mobile devices are one of the key drivers of podcast growth as 64 percent of podcasts are now listened to on a smartphone or tablet, according to Edison Research. Americans spend about 2 percent of their daily share of audio consumption listening to podcasts. That might not seem like much, but that 2 percent accounts for about 15 minutes each day, or one hour and 45 minutes a week. With global smartphone use surpassing the 2 billion mark this year, listening patterns are expected to change as more and more people subscribe to podcasts.

While some media companies are frustrated by the paltry share of the U.S. advertising pie that podcasts attract ($34 million according to Pew Research), that’s part of the appeal—minimal commercial interruption compared to often-annoying commercial radio.

Business professionals and entrepreneurs rank high among podcast aficionados

Time-pressed, information-hungry people who are anxious to get a variety of perspectives and ideas from experts in different business fields are an ideal audience for podcasts. But, they’ll only do so if it’s easy and convenient. You can listen to podcasts as you sit in traffic, exercise, walk your dog or cook dinner. As podcast guru Jay Baer explained, “Increasingly, business people (especially marketers) are using podcasts to stay on top of trends because it’s the most time-efficient way to get educated. You can multi-task your podcast listening in ways you simply cannot with other forms of content.”

Podcasts are easily consumable because they don’t require the listener’s undivided attention like video, TV or books do. For podcasters, the ability to speak to your audience directly, in your own voice, at a time when it’s most convenient for them to listen to you, podcasts help you connect with your audience on a deeper and more personal level.   

Also, podcasts aren’t just for one-way communication with your audience. You can invite an expert or thought leader to be a guest on your “show.” You can interview experts, and even consumers. Podcasting is a great way to put forth the views of people your audience is most likely to trust -- experts, and their peers.

You can distribute podcasts through multiple channels.

While the most common thing to do is to broadcast your podcasts on your website or blog, you can spread their reach across the global audience through services like iTunes, Stitcher and SoundCloud. You can also use social channels to share your podcasts with your audience.

 

Ease of creation.

From a technical and cost perspective, podcasts are much easier to create than video and webinars. You don’t need to worry about hair, lighting, makeup, tele-prompters, slides or “freezing up” when the red light goes on. Just get a decent microphone and recording device and read your script calmly (or bring in a narrator to do it for you). OK, there’s a bit more to it, but podcasting should not be one of your 10 biggest tech challenges of 2017. As with writing, blogging, tweeting and video, Plotke said producing podcasts on a regular and consistent basis do far more for you than just posting sporadic episodes. That takes a little discipline, and there are reasonably-priced professionals who can help you sound great without “dragging your feet into the weeds on every detail.”

Our own blog has more as does the FREE Resources page of our website.

Conclusion

To that end, HB Publishing & Marketing Company now has podcasting expertise on call. Just let us know when you’re ready to stick your toe into this burgeoning thought leadership content platform and we’ll help you connect with a larger audience than you ever thought possible.

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Podcasting, Edison Research, Daryl Plotke, Stitcher, SoundCloud

Can Web Advertising Adjust to Privacy Rules Proposed by Big Government?

Worst of recession appears over, but now real work begins in age of creative destruction.

The Fed held its ground on interest rates today. Yesterday, the U.S. Labor Department said productivity in the second quarter gained 6.4 percent -- the biggest quarterly gain in nearly six years despite an ongoing contraction in the overall economy. More than a few economists have suggested companies are adjusting to the recession by cutting jobs and workers' hours. Or maybe companies are becoming more innovative. Mind you, that’s not the same as “doing more with less” because innovation is proactive and forward-thinking. “Doing more with less” is reactionary, and often a desperation tactic that leads ultimately to worker burnout and defection – not long term profitability when the economy rebounds.

With stocks at their highest levels since autumn, interest rates holding steady, unemployment not getting too much worse at least statistically (see Wall Street Journal video report and the “cash for clunkers” program injecting signs of hope into the auto industry, some analysts are predicting a correction.

Sure there are plenty of signals about this being a “suckers rally,” but even bearish traders are giving credence to the market turnaround. “You can’t knock this market down,” Joe Saluzzi, co-head of equity trading told the New York Times last week. “Every dip is bought. Any sort of downdraft is picked up right away. I’m extremely bearish but I will not short this.” What’s more, the National Association of Realtors said the increase in pending sales – a forward looking measure of the market offered signs that the market is on the mend. New and previously owned sales have leveled off and single family home prices have begun to show some stability.

So just as consumers and businesses are getting their wallet-opening muscles limbered up, the government. may want to throw a wet blanket on the hottest area of ad growth during the past decade, including the recession.

Government online privacy rules a ‘setback to innovation’?

“We’re not committing ourselves to imposing regulation; what we would like to do is figure out useful tools and a more comprehensive way of looking at privacy protections that may obviate the need for rules,” said David Vladek new head of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Bureau of Consumer Protection in a recent statement. The message is you have to be more transparent about what you’re doing and the privacy “frameworks” the industry has been using historically are no longer sufficient, he said.

Vladek wants sites collecting personal data to get consumers consent whenever they visit the site (opt in)…. But marketers say such a tactic would be disastrous. “It’s impossible to communicate the value prop to a consumer at the point of and advertisement,” Matt Wise CEO of Q Interactive a Chicago online marketing firm told the New York Times and other trade media last week. It would be a tremendous setback to innovation.“

At HB, we think the solution relies somewhere in between in the form of a mutual trust system between innovators and regulators. Marketers and other data gatherers need to be more accountable, if not necessarily transparent, to regulators and consumers about the proprietary personal data they’re gathering – and how they’re gathering it. On the flip side, regulators need to take the time to understand fully how the online marketing mechanism works, why it’s so powerful, and how it’s changing the future of commerce worldwide. Regulators, shouldn’t be allowed to introduce sweeping legislation to punish a few bad apples, without fully understanding the industry they’re trying to govern. Otherwise their actions could bring one of the few growing sectors of our economy to a halt. And that includes emerging platforms such as online video (see below)

Keep your eye on online video

Online video viewing has grown across all age groups, according to new research (pdf) from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life project. Not surprisingly, young adults continue to lead the adoption curve in online video viewing, though adults ages 30-49 also showed big gains over the past year; 67 percent now use video-sharing sites, up from 57% in 2008 according to the Pew study, Researchers found nearly two thirds (62%) of adult internet users have watched online video on a video-sharing website, a figure that has nearly doubled from 33 percent in 2006. The study also found that 19 percent of online adults use video-sharing sites on a typical day (compared with 8 percent in 2006).

While much of the content on video-sharing sites is still user-generated, a growing archive of professional content is becoming increasingly available through YouTube and network-sponsored video portals such as Hulu, MarketingCharts reports. In response, more than one-third (35%) of internet users now say they have viewed a TV show or movie online. This compares with just 16% of internet users who had watched or downloaded movies or TV shows in 2007.

Video outranks social networks, twitter

Pew noted that the use of video-sharing sites currently outranks many other online pastimes of American adults, though video viewing does not always get a proportionate amount of media attention. Watching online videos on sites such as YouTube and Google Video is more prevalent than the use of social networking sites (46% of adult internet users are active on such sites), podcast downloading (19% of internet users) and the use of micro-blogging tools such as Twitter (11% of internet users).

The darkest days are over, but the good times are a long way off. Innovation, whether benign or in the form of “creative destruction” is the only thing that will get us back on the path to prosperity. Let’s just be responsible about how we innovate (or monitor those who innovate).