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