Something very interesting happened to me lately that really illustrates how podcasting can help business.

Some of the podcasts I put out (more and more of late because I’m enjoying doing it this way) involve me interviewing people who are either using web audio in an interesting way or are in some way fans and advocates of web audio. This is becoming a very useful extra way of networking for me and interestingly, has led directly to some paid work with one of the interviewees, which was completely unintentional.

Now, obviously I’m a professional audio type person so it’s not that much of a surprise that the work I’ve been comissioned to do is as a ‘jobcaster’ on Jobs In Pods but why couldn’t this happen to you in your line of work?

I’m not saying you should choose interviewees hoping to turn them into clients (the Jobs in Pods offer came as a lovely surprise to me) but you just never know where the connections we make when we step outside the blog postings and get on the phone will lead…

This latest edition of my podcast is ready to listen to. In it I talk to blogging expert, Claire Raikes, otherwise known as the Business Blog Angel. She gives her thoughts on how you can start podcasting as well as talking about blogging and social media in general.

We got a little carried away with the interview and so I’ve split it into two parts (listen out for Claire’s advice on this and note my cheeky monkiness for nicking her idea!).

You can listen to part one by clicking on the play button here, and the audio will play directly from your computer (it’s about 20 minutes long):

Or you can listen on your mp3 player by subscribing in itunes (the link will only work if you have itunes)or by copying and pasting this feed http://audiopodartist.libsyn.com/rss into another podcatcher. Don’t have a clue what I’m talking about? Have a look at my explanation to clarify (and if it doesn’t clarify matters, please let me know why).

Internet marketing expert, Victoria Player, will be interviewing me tonight for her teleclass on how to use web audio in your businesses to boost your web presence.

Here are the details for anyone interested in popping along - it’s free so what have you got to lose? Hope to see you there!

Victoria’s message starts:

TOPIC: "Boost Your Biz and Buzz on the Web… Using FREE Podcasting to Generate Publicity and Rack up Sales" with Victoria Player and special guest Sarah Rourke.

WHEN: TUESDAY, 1st April 2008 at 8:00pm GMT, 4pm US Eastern, 3pm US Central, 1pm US Pacific.

If you’re like most solo entrepreneurs, you could be losing thousands of pounds each month on the web! Join Victoria and Sarah Rouke, the "Audio Pod Artist," and former BBC radio journalist/producer as they reveal simple tips to get FREE traffic and FREE publicity from podcasts while simultaneously attracting new customers online.

Just think about it — wouldn’t being interviewed in your own podcast radio show rock your business world? Wouldn’t it skyrocket you above your competition? Wouldn’t it increase your sales?

If you think creating your own podcast isn’t for you or you can’t afford it, think again. Victoria and Sarah will show you how! You’ll learn:

·         why it’s time you had a first-class podcast to separate you from your competitors

·         how to become the podcast celebrity expert in your niche

·         how to air your own podcast show for less (or even FREE!)

·         powerful ways to use your podcast show to generate business

Hurry, this call is being held TOMORROW. Go here now to snag your spot!

P.S. – Oh and when you book your place you also get 2 Months FREE membership in my Conscious Marketing Mastermind program.

Victoria Player, The "Online Marketing Coach"

VictoriaPlayer.com incorporating Innovation Coaching

Web: www.InnovationCoaching.co.uk

Email: info@InnovationCoaching.co.uk

"Can I Give you 2 Entire Months of my new Conscious Marketing Mastermind Program … for FREE?

Victoria’s message ends

If you read this blog it’s likely that you are looking for tips on easy podcasting or you wanted to get started in using web audio in general. Much of my own podcasting is about just this and I’ve decided to integrate the podcast into my blog to make it even easier for you to click on and listen.

In this show I interviewed Joanna Young from Confident Writing about her foray into the world of podcasting. As the name of her site suggests, Joanna is a professional writer and coaches people around their writing so why on earth would she want to start podcasting?

Well, in the show she tells us about her fears and how she overcame them to find that podcasting was much easier than she’d initially thought. And she tells us why she decided that a podcast could be a useful enhancement to her website.

Have a listen to the show to find out. You can simply click on the player below to listen directly from your computer (it’s about 15 minutes long):

Or you can listen on your mp3 player by subscribing in itunes (the link will only work if you have itunes)or by copying and pasting this feed http://audiopodartist.libsyn.com/rss into another podcatcher. Don’t have a clue what I’m talking about? Have a look at my explanation to clarify (and if it doesn’t clarify matters, please let me know why).

The third in a series of innovative ways of using podcasting in business, this week I’ve gone for a chef who has chosen to produce audio products to showcase his cookery talents and knowledge of food. Now, I didn’t choose this case just because I’m a sucker for a French accent but it really helps…

Phillipe Haag is an independent chef and small business owner and he’s gone for a montage style of podcast. This means he’s been interviewed and the results have been edited into a commentary of him talking about certain types of food and then going through a recipe (sound effects included for authenticity!).

How can podcasting work for Phillipe?

• He has a great voice - what an accent!
• It allows him to showcase his expertise in a way other than blogging.
• Part of his business is to cater for parties in people’s homes - podcasting helps him build that ‘know, like, trust’ relationship with customers.

Feeling inspired? Keep checking back as I rummage through cyber space to find you more examples of podcasting in business.

Remember I looked at those welcome clips in a previous blog post? Here’s one way you can add them to your site really easily.

Audio Generator is a well-known resource for recording audio for websites. It’s especially useful for those who don’t want to go to the trouble of getting microphones etc because you can record it straight down a phone line.

In the true spirit of the adventurer, I tried it out for you so that you can get an idea of how useable it is and how the end product sounds (and yes, that really is my cat, Betty, making a guest appearance).

Useability:
Easy peasy. The whole process, from signup to the perfectly created masterpiece (!) you can listen to above, took about 30 minutes. The recording was the quickest part, the sign up and navigating around the site took the most time, although the site is very user friendly. So, once set up, it doesn’t take long to record and post the recording.

Getting it onto my site was also easy. You’re reading this in Typepad, I literally changed my page view to HTML and pasted in a code I was given, once I’d finished my recording (I was allowed to choose my colour and style of button too).

Other Features:

There’s an option to send audio postcards to people, which is a nice twist on the newsletter or ezine and can be built into your marketing strategy.

You also get a dedicated line for your clients to leave testimonials - they can also leave super-testimonials where they add a photo and some text - all very slick…

Cost:
$29 dollars per month but there is a free 21 day trial period.

Downside:
The telephone line quality isn’t great but you do have the option of either using a microphone to record your messages or have your recordings done for you by your friendly local audio editor and have them uploaded to the site.

Whilst my message took me a few seconds to record, I would obviously never post my welcome message to my website with my cat purring in the background i.e. it was an easy take because it was only an illustration. You’ll want your welcome message to sound as blip free as possible so you might need a couple of tries to get it right. You get the option to record again but you do have to get the whole ‘take’ again each time, as there’s no going back to edit it later (or add music etc to it).

Verdict:
Good stuff for the non-techie but weigh up the quality issues that go with it.

If anyone has any experience of using this or other similar resources then I’m all ears…

Do you ever feel stuck for ideas when it comes to making a podcast? Once you’ve worked out the subject of your podcast then you’ll want to include lots of engaging content to keep your target audience interested.

A very simple and easy way of doing this is by interviewing people who have something to say on your subject area. Let’s say you sell power tools online and you want to podcast about DIY. You could interview DIY experts or people who offer courses on plumbing and the like. But you don’t have to stop with the experts. You could talk to someone who has bought some of your tools and ask them about how they put them to use, for example, or you could open up a question and answer session where you talk to people about particular DIY problems they have.

But surely this is going to be time consuming, rushing around to carry out these various interviews? Not as much as you might think. This can all be done from the comfort of your own home via Skype and the telephone. You can make a small investment into a Skype compatible headset (mine is a Plantronics and cost around £30), get hooked up to Skype (free), and to record your calls, buy either Skype’s Skylook programme or Pamela (try both for free then it’s a small fee for a life-long licence). The other party can speak to you on their normal phone, as long as you’re making the call via Skype. You can then edit as much or as little as you like, depending on how much time you have.

All told, this is a great way to create a podcast. Using another person’s voice helps to break the monotony, adds interest and brings a fresh angle to your topic. Yet another way to get your voice into their heads…

You know you want to use audio on your website because you’ve heard so much about the benefits - increased traffic, return visitors, people staying longer on your site but you’re still not sure how or where to go about it.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be looking at ways in which you can use audio on your website, this time looking at the welcome clip.

What is a welcome clip? Well, it’s a short audio piece which serves several purposes:

• Let’s clients or prospective clients hear your voice and enhances the ‘know, like, trust’ principle.
• Gives you the opportunity to place a call to action - you might want prospects to sign up for your newsletter, leave a comment on your blog or check out your special offers - whatever it is you want them to do, this is the time to say it.
• Adds some interest to your website, instead of just the usual text offerings (and targets those auditory people out there).

See the audio player in the top left column? That’s my welcome clip that I use on my blog for an idea of how it sounds. I want people to engage with me and feel they can contact me for information. I could rotate this with one asking people to sign up for my free report, to see what effect that has on sign ups.

Don’t get bogged down by technology - you don’t have to add music and sound effects, your voice is more than enough to engage people. And as for length, there’s no hard and fast rule but just keep it to the point - you don’t need to tell people everything at this stage. One thing to note, and there are various schools of thought around this, I would avoid having the audio start automatically. LOTS of people find this very annoying. Make sure your web person knows to set it to play on request rather than automatic play…

Check back here regularly as I’ll also be blogging about the types of resources you can use to get your audio resources up and running. Please do feel free to ask any questions or leave comments - they’re always welcome.

This is the second post in a series about innovative ways of using podcasting in business. The further I dig into the web, the more quirky and interesting examples I find of audio resources being used by businesses with some really embracing multi-media to provide the best experience possible for their customers.

How many times have you been in a museum and taken the audio tour? Well, the Visit Bristol team have taken this idea to their market and offer free mp3 downloads of various key sight-seeing tours around the city. They’re really nicely produced, the Quayside tour has some brilliant sound effects and music which fit so well with the subject matter - so much better than a guide book!

But how does podcasting help this tourist information site to serve the customer?

• It allows him to take a ‘guided’ tour at their leisure.
• It lets him decide which tours would be most appealing before they setting off.
• It provides school teachers and educators with some excellent material they could use later in the classroom.
• It appeals to the mp3 generation, therefore offering something of interest to a potentially otherwise disengaged audience.

A suggestion by my coach to set up google alerts on podcasting has led me to discover lots of very interesting uses of podcasting in business, which gives me a lot of information and inspiration (although it can be a little distracting at times).

One of the sites the alert pointed me to was a great website which uses ‘jobcasts’ to  showcase employers who are recruiting. Jobs in Pods carries out interviews with employers in a relatively informal way, discussing the company, its customer base, the vacancies available and the type of candidate they’re looking for.

This really appeals as a way of recruiting on lots of levels:

• It gives a much more in-depth overview of the company than a job description ever could.
• After some initial podcast training or learning it’s relatively cost effective to do in-house (time willing).
• It’s a USP for a recruitment company - audio marketing can make you stand out from the crowd.
• Potential for other uses of the medium - candidate interviews could be recorded and ‘published’ privately for employers as an initial screening tool.

I’ll keep you posted as and when I come across other innovative uses of audio resources…