Corporate Podcasting Summit London | Summary
After three wonderful days in London absorbing rich information, seeing podcasting friends, making new acquaintances and having excellent conversation, here are the overall thoughts and impressions that I gained while attending and leading a group at the Corporate Podcasting Summit.
1. Corporations with foresight are doing very interesting things with podcasting
Many large organizations are having great with podcasting success with applications ranging from customer relations to training to PR. I especially enjoyed the case studies presented by First Direct Bank (who’ve received great feedback from their , CSIRO podcast (who’ve had great PR success with their viral air guitar shirt scientist) and Alcatel-Lucent (who’ve had success with their internal podcasting initiatives)
2. However, corporations are still very hampered by bureaucracy and concerns inherent to big business
Corporations still have lots of questions and concerns about adopting podcasting including:
- Needing better proof of the ROI
- Internal bureaucracy slowing the integration of podcasting (or pulling the plug right before launch despite a lot of hard work and investment)
- The chance of hurting the brand
- A lack of control in communications
- Cost of getting started
3. Risk might be a little high, but the potential reward is great
Admittedly the risk could be high for some corporations who don’t take the time to do it right (Starbuck’s podcast flop was used as an example by Leesa Barnes), but the opportunity is huge for those willing to jump in and make it work.
4. Small businesses are more ready to podcastIf you are in a small business it’s easier to move quickly, take more risks, avoid bureaucracy and change your internal culture as needed in order to adopt podcasting. Most of my clients are small businesses and this is no surprise.
5. Podcasting is not for every corporation or large organization
I think I could find a useful application of podcasting for just about any small business. On the other hand, corporations need to take a look at their internal culture before diving into podcasting. It just might not be a good fit. The place to start is by asking the hard question: do we have a culture of listening…whether to our employees (internal podcasting) or our customers (external podcasting)? If the answer is no, work on that first then come back and consider podcasting.
6. Some corporations need to realize that just having a podcast is not the point
What’s needed is:
- More interaction with your customers/employees
- Providing portable, digital, on-demand content
- Listening to your customers/employees
Podcasting is a great way to do these things, but first of all realize the importance of the above points and that podcasting is just one subset of the bigger picture.
And on another note, you can see a couple photos here and here.
March 30th, 2007 11:38
[...] Jason Van Orden provides an excellent summary of the benefits and drawbacks of corporate podcasting based on what he saw and heard at the Corporate Podcasting Summit. [...]