RSS feedsPodcasts are adding the ‘human touch’ to previously dry corporate information. They are providing a fresh new learning tool for professional development and study in corporates and universities. They allow people to ‘time-shift’ when they want to receive information into previously dead time so, for example, an executive can catch up regulatory developments while driving a car.
These are just some of the reasons why podcasting has hit the corporate information and academic mainstream. According to Factiva , the term podcasting was first used only two years ago. Now Nielsen/NetRatings has found that 6.6% of US adult web users have recently downloaded a podcast.
Some of the big content providers are moving into audio for the first time to capitalise on the interest in podcasting and to extend their portfolio. Nature , for example, was one of the first journals to launch a podcast back in October 2005. It now has 40,000 downloads a week – nearly half of which come through RSS feeds.
According to Timo Hannay, NPG director for web publishing, the podcast was launched as a three-month experiment. “We think podcasting has a lot of potential as a scientific publishing medium,” he says.
Hannay’s team planned to commission research into podcasting but quickly realised that doing market research costs more than the actual product. “It is quick and cheap to put a toe in the water. It is OK to do an experiment as long as you are not hung up on losing face if it doesn’t work,” says Hannay.
The organisation had no experience of generating audio content and Hannay describes podcasting as “a real departure” for the company. He believes the podcast has been successful because the content serves a genuine purpose for scientists who can listen to it at a time when they wouldn’t have been able to read it. “Junior scientists spend a considerable amount of time doing experiments, and they need something to listen to.
“Other unexpected results include its popularity among young Japanese scientists, who are partly using podcasts as language learning tools. It is good practice for them to listen to scientific English spoken; we have even published transcripts,” he says.
Hannay acknowledges that podcasting is very trendy at the moment. “iTunes is a phenomenon in itself. As soon as we were listed on ‘new and noted’ on iTunes, that helped as it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
He also believes podcasting offers added-value to text-based journal papers. “Audio conveys personality, passions, interests – and you get the feeling behind the paper. The scientist talking about their work conveys the human side.
“The other thing you can do really well on podcasts is have debates. Audio lends itself much more to debate than print. We are not trying to replicate the same information we have in print,” he explains.
“It is now paying for itself and supporting our mission to provide content,” says Hannay. “We are continuing to expand into other types of audio. We will be putting out the second in an occasional series of chemistry podcasts and doing more like that in special domains. You can expect to see more society journals getting podcasts.”
Elsevier’s International Medical News Group (IMNG) has a weekly podcasts programme, Stat! – the podcast of Clinical Neurology News, sponsored by the Ortho McNeil division of Johnson & Johnson.
“From our perspective, there are two ways to approach this new medium: low-cost, low-production value (basically a droning voice reading from a print source); or a more costly, but better produced, product that plays to the medium’s strengths, allowing music, multiple speakers and scripted programming,” says Alan Imhoff, IMNG president.
“We chose that route so we could separate ourselves from the amateurs. And there will be a lot of them as the basic equipment to produce a viable product is inexpensive and easy to obtain,” says Imhoff.
One of the issues in providing podcasts – especially those that are a separate product to the written content – is cost. Sponsorship appears to be proving a popular route to funding podcasts rather than charging users.
“We are a for-profit operation,” says Imhoff. “IMNG publishes 17 medical newspapers, and they are all advertising supported. We don’t follow a subscription model. I don’t think there is much support for a paid subscription approach to podcasting.”
Hannay says that NPG is keeping the revenue model under review. “We could have made it a loss leader and given it away free. We wanted some revenue from it, though, to be able to continue it and develop the show.
“It is difficult to charge listeners in theory and in practice,” he says. “They are just not used to being charged for podcasts. In future, I can see us doing a paid-for listener experiment, but I am not sure the Nature podcast is the right one for this experiment. Since we launched it, this space has become crowded with New Scientist and Scientific American offering podcasts as well. The temptation would be to switch to other free content.
“One of the things we need to look out for is how ‘in your face’ the sponsorship message is, and where we put the message on the podcast?”
Podcasts are commonly used as loss leaders; in effect, marketing tools for written products or affiliated services.
Online reference specialist Books24x7 has launched a free monthly podcast series featuring business leaders and excerpts from its ExecBlueprints. Vice president of the company, John Ambrose, says, “Our strategy is evolving. At present, we have a two-pronged approach. We are using podcasting as a marketing tool to reach out to those who are not aware of the quality of the content we offer. More importantly, we are also seeing more and more companies embracing podcasting as a valuable business tool.
“Scores of companies are licensing our content, buying iPods for their executives and preloading our content. In some cases, people will update their own iPods , or they may get their PAs to do it,” says Ambrose.
He says corporates take different routes to get podcast information to their employees. Some adopt a self-service approach, whereby they license the content and then do internal communications to make people aware of it but leave it to the individual to choose which podcasts he or she wants. Others create links to the podcast through professional development programmes or competency levels.
There are widely diverging views about what is driving podcast usage and development. Analyst company Forrester reports, “Companies that are interested in using podcasts for their audio should focus not only on downloads, but also on streaming audio as a means to get their content and ads to consumers.”
Mary Madden, senior research specialist at Pew Research Centre, says that podcasting takes advantage of the extended life of content online. While an organisation may initially create a podcast for a specific, perhaps even localised, audience they may find that once the content is made available online, new unanticipated audiences take interest in the content.
“For educational and governmental audiences that are driven by the desire to share information resources as widely as possible, the possibility of discovery by new audiences can be very appealing,” says Madden.
“There has been quite a bit of debate about the future growth of podc astin g,” she adds. “For the moment, it remains an activity that appeals primarily to the tech elite, who tend to be younger and have higher education and income levels. “
Analyst firm Gartner Group advises: “Enterprises should review their communication and training strategies to find places where podcasting would be valuable.”
Technological developments look set to drive podcasting. Mobile casting, where podcasts are driven direct to the latest generation of mobile phones, is becoming available. Then podcasts won’t be limited to only people who own an iPod or other mp3 player because video podcasting will become possible.
In the corporate information and academic worlds, though, improved searchability of audio content could well become a key driver. Podcast search engines such as Podzinger and Podscope are available but can only work with technology that is available to them.
“In the broader consumer market, the industry needs to work on improving discoverability of audio content,” Ambrose says. “Today, only meta-data is searchable, so the ability to find relevant content is constrained by the availability and quality of the meta-data.
“Discoverability is even more critical in the corporate market because personal productivity is directly related to how effectively people can find the information they need,” explains Ambrose.
Alex Bellinger, managing director of Audacious, a communications agency that specialises in podcast consultancy and production, predicted at the beginning of the year that 2006 would be the year of the business podcast, with 50% of FTSE-100 companies producing a podcast to complement their own internal or external communications strategies.
Bellinger highlights some of the practical applications. “From a practical business perspective, podcasts could be used to record key meetings or briefing sessions to allow those unable to attend to keep up to date. Market research and sales departments could put together updates on particular markets or competit or information to allow their salesforces to keep on top of a changing sales environment – listening to podcasts on the move in their cars, for example.”
He believes podcasts may join other user-produced communications, such as blogs, in driving a change in corporate information.“The user and producer are often one and the same. Handing over the opportunity to podcast to employees rather than allowing it to reside safely and soundly in the hands of corporate communicators requires a big cultural shift for some companies, but is also the big opportunity in this space,” says Bellinger.
“The beauty of podcasting is that it doesn’t matter whether you have 50, 5,000 or five million listeners,” explains Bellinger. “If the content suits the audience, and the podcast allows them to participate, then it becomes a valuable way of breaking down barriers, sharing knowledge and engaging with specialist communities.”
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