Podcast Best Practices

I have become a regular podcast listener and I thought I would share some best/worst practices I have observed as a listener, as well as links to my favorite podcasts.

1. Cut the theatrics and get to the point. Long theatrical beginnings with music, commercial messages, etc may lose your listeners. One technique I find valuable is Marketing Voices by Jennifer Jones. She always starts with a sound bite from her guest that gives you a sense of what's to come. In contrast, I really dislike the "sharing is good" commercial from Sun on the BusinessWeek podcasts.

2. Keep your personal discussions personal. Don't waste the listeners time with discussions only relevant to the people creating the podcast. There was one podcast where I was interested in the title, but the jabbering at the beginning between the participants was so bad I couldn't bear to wait for the real meat of the topic.

3. Make it easy for your listeners to find links to content you mention during the podcast. An example of where this was not done well was Venture Voice's podcast of a new product called Dry Soda. It was intriguing, but she never gave us a url to go to afterwards. I subscribed through iTunes, so it took some time before I could find the link to the podcast and then a link to the company. A group that does this extremely well is Internet Business Mastery. I have learned a great deal from them and almost always go to the website afterwards and find great tools.

4. Keep it short. 30 minutes is about the right length for a podcast. Listeners are likely to be listening while exercising, driving or doing something else. Make your content consumable in a time period that fits this use model. One podcast I enjoy is Across the Sound . They usually have great guests, but at one hour, I start to lose attention about half way through. Remember the use model!

5. If are not a good communicator, don't be a guest on a podcast. It's quite frustrating to hear a speaker with um, ah, well, and all kinds of fillers that are used when people are not good public speakers. This will likely do your brand more harm than good to put a speaker on a podcast that is not articulate. I'll save someone the embarrassment of linking to their podcast. I'm sure you have all heard it before.

6. And finally, a note to iTunes. Please make the URL to the podcast more accessible. Why do I have to go to Google to find the URL when you can provide it in the information section of the podcast.

These are just a few quick tips I have observed. In general I have found podcasting to be a great way to learn new things or hear from the experts in their field while doing something else (driving, exercising, gardening). There is so much content out there to absorb, this gives one another option when you are tired of reading the computer screen.

Here are a few of my favorite marketing & business related podcasts:

Internet Business Mastery
Across the Sound
Marketing Voices
Venture Voice
BusinessWeek
Wired Magazine

Brands and Customer Experience

Max Kaleoff has a posting today on Brand Experience and Customer Service. This is a critical area of the business to understand in today's world of connected word of mouth. Before when you had a positive or negative customer experience, you told the people in your immediate circle of friends and colleagues. Now, consumers chronicle their experiences on the Internet and potential touch millions of other consumers, and that experience remains on the Internet for search engines to find and serve up to future consumers. It will likely effect other potential buyers of your product or service.

This is the connection that matters. Organizations must evaluate their customer service experience and understand how it impacts future buying decisions. An investment in a positive experience will go a long way to future revenues.

In an early posting this week, I shared my own brand experiences.

Technorati - What's This?

I was just trying to use the Technorati search engine and without even typing in a search string, I got this message:

Sorry
We couldn't complete your search because we're experiencing a high volume of requests right now. Please try again in a minute or two. We're working hard to make our search results better. Thanks for your patience.

« Technorati Home

I have often wondered why we need a search engine focused purely on blogs when Google and Yahoo can give us everything. If Google and Yahoo allowed a flag of "blogs only" and provided the kind of market research on blogging that Technorati reports, I think Technorati would become irrelevant. Error messages may accelerate that process.

It's all about the customer experience

As we contemplate the age of consumer control, I have become increasingly aware of my own personal experience with brands and how they effect my purchasing decision. Here are a few stories. I share them as illustrations on the ROI of investing in the customer experience. I believe that all companies should invest in understanding the customer's experience when interacting with your organization. It will make a bigger impact than the new ad campaign or lead generation program you are planning to invest in.

Story #1: Resort at Squaw Creek vs. Hyatt Regency Incline Village
Earlier this month my daughter and I went on a road trip to Lake Tahoe. We had no itinerary, just pointed in the direction of Tahoe and used various online sources to book hotels along the way. One night we booked the Resort at Squaw Creek for $210/night and another the Hyatt Regency in Incline Village for $385/night. Expensive hotel rooms are not unusual for us as we enjoy the finer things in life, but when you pay that much (remember this is not midtown NY), you expect "an experience".

Long story short, we had an amazing experience at the Resort at Squaw Creek and an equally negative experience at Hyatt Regency. This was the exact opposite of what the rates would have indicated. The accommodations, service, staff, food and quality of the Resort at Squaw Creek was equal to many quality hotels I have stayed in such as the Ritz Carlton Half Moon Bay. At the Hyatt Regency, the rooms where more like a Holiday Inn and the service at the Lone Eagle restaurant was horrible! I ended up checking out early and while the front desk personnel tried hard to make up for our experience, I have been left with a negative experience that will effect my choice of Hyatt resorts and guaranteed never to return to this particular hotel.

Story #2: Cingular vs. Verizon
I have been a cell phone user for 20 years, had the same carrier even though my carrier had gone through 2 acquisitions. First it was Pactel Infosystems, then AT&T Wireless and now Cingular. Every couple years I have renewed my contract, got a new phone and paid my bills regularly. About 2 weeks ago I went to the Cingular store to upgrade my phone to an integrated PDA. I planned to buy the Treo and sign up for another 2 year contract. I had the Treo in my hand, the service agent was ready to ring me up and when he pulled up my record he found that I had a payment due in 3 days and could not transfer me from AT&T Wireless to Cingular (same company that has sent me a bill for the past 2 years!) unless I paid the outstanding balance. My husband pays the bills and after contacting him I found that the payment had already been entered to pay through our online banking and could not be stopped. So Cingular gave me 2 choices; pay the bill in the store and when the other payment was received I could submit for a refund, OR leave the store. Out of complete frustration and disbelief I left the store.

The irony is that this is a company that can easily see my track record of paying my bills. However, I could walk down the street to Verizon who knows nothing about me and get what I wanted now without fighting for a refund later. Which is what I did. Several days later I found myself parked in front of the Verizon store in Palo Alto with my old cell phone hanging on to it's last days. I walked in, got served by a knowledgeable representative that showed me the Treo and the Motorola Q. She was able to tell me the pros and cons of each of the phone/pdas and help me decide on the Motorola Q. I walked out with my new phone AND a new carrier. Sorry Cingular, I've moved to Verizon Wireless where they never stop working for you!

Story #3: Bloomingdales credit vs. American Express
My last story is one of call centers. My husband had a bad bill paying day and accidentally overpaid a couple of my credit cards and I found myself with $1100 credit on my Bloomingdales card. I had a smaller balance on my American Express card. I decided to clean this up and have get checks sent to me from both of the creditors. I tried to do it over the Internet, but couldn't, so I called the call center. American Express helped me in a reasonable amount of time with some woman in India who spoke reasonable English, overall a reasonable experience. In contrast Bloomingdales automated call routing system took me 2 or 3 entries to hear the words "you have a credit balance, would you like us to send you a check?" I just about fell over in my chair! I hate those automated call routing systems because typically you type in a bunch of stuff and you still have to talk to an agent and give them the same information again! If all automated systems were as efficient and helpful as the Bloomingdales credit card line, I would value automation more as helpful to me, the consumer, and a cost savings for the provider. A win-win.

It's these experiences that will determine my brand preference, not the obnoxious ads I have to watch multiple times during a TV show or that jump up and down on my screen while surfing the Internet.

Marketers today have to tackle the customer experience. If Marketing has no control over the organizations ability to deliver the brand promise, marketing will struggle in effecting the revenues of the business. You may be able to get the buyers to the party, but if their experience is not positive, it would have been better not to have them come at all.

I would be very interested in hearing stories from Marketing leaders that have found ways to affect the overall customer experience. It's not always part of the marketing role, but it's critical in impacting loyalty and word of mouth marketing. Are marketing leaders given enough organizational clout to drive the change required to service today's consumer controlled market?

Here are a couple of related blogs/articles that share similar prospective.
Customer Feedback, or What I Learned on My Summer Vacation, by Heidi Cohen

Reinventing the Marketing Organization by Peter Kim

Can Passionate, Driven People Really Unwind?

Last week my daughter, Gabi, and I went on our annual road trip. This one was different than last year in that I wasn't constantly checking my blackberry or leaving the room early in the morning to attend a conference call. I actually had days where I did not touch a keyboard (note: my hands were twitching!).

We left with no itinerary, visited the Grandparents and found ourselves at Lake Tahoe for the week. We moved around a lot but a favorite place was Resort at Squaw Creek. I highly recommend it!

Since returning on Sunday I've been back on in full swing - on the phone, doing email, attending networking events and in business meetings. Today I had lunch with a couple of business colleagues. They are building their own consulting business specializing in B2B search engine marketing after many years of pouring their heart and soul into other companies. They, like many others I have spoken to recently, have encouraged me to relax, disconnect and take time off. It sounds great, but I can't seem to get into that space. Even during my road trip, I had to stop myself from logging on to email, reading through my RSS feeds or writing my own posts. It is hard to disconnect from the connected world.

There are so many interesting projects and challenges out there that intrigue me. I'm not at a point where I can turn that off. But, I do feel there is need for balance. Being with my daughter over the past few weeks has reminded me that you must invest in all aspects of your life. We give so much to our careers, to the companies we want to help be successful, to the people that we work for and who work for us. We also need to take the time to give to ourselves and to our family, to invest in LIFE!

These two professionals are similar to me - passionate, talented, driven people, yet they found a way to regain balance in life. So for now, I seek balance. I'm not ready to disconnect, but I do want to hear about the boys that enter my daughter's life every day. She doesn't keep them around long enough to withstand my business trips, board meetings, annual review cycles, end of quarter crunch, etc.

To Robyn and Ralph, thanks for showing me that you can still achieve great things and find balance in life! You are my inspiration!