Strive Notes

Podcasting has implications for public relations professionals.  Creating audio content for a target audience to listen to when they want and where they want to opens up a lot of opportunities for us and our clients. 

On the surface, Podcasting gives PRs another tool.  Creating audio files to push on RSS feeds is a great way to add value.  I personally quite enjoy listening to podcasts while I’m going through my news pushes and feeds every morning.  It’s a cool way to do two things as once. 

We should be encouraging our clients to utilise this valuable communications media.  Short interviews with product managers, CEOs or customers seem like an obvious way to employ Podcasts.  More involved productions of round table discussions, news-type programmes could also work. And highly-polished “audio news releases” seem to be a great way to push hard news out too. 

But equally interesting is the way this new technology is changing how the media works. You will all have heard about Ricky Gervais and The Guardian charging for downloads of his Podcast.  This practice is bound to catch on in the same way that free online news sites moved over to subscriptions.  What are implications of Podcasting on the media and publishers?  How will it change the way they deliver content  in the future?  ID3 Podcasting Magazine is running an interview with Simon Nelson, head of Interactive Radio at the BBC.  In it he discusses the trends and issues for the UK and global media. He also gives a great over overview of what’s on offer at the BBC and plans for the future. Of course ID3 has a podcast of the interview (16 minutes long).  You should have a listen. 

I also wanted to mention the US PR Week’s Julia Hood column giving blogging guidance to PR agencies. It seems that the big agencies are “spamming” journalists with notifications every time they update their blogs. She discusses what kind of content journalists will find valuable and I thought this story is worth the read.   Constantin Basturea’s blog PR meets the WWW mentions Hood’s column.  I’ll be keeping an eye on the discussion that ensues. 

Are any of you producing Podcasts for clients?  Let us know what you are doing!  Any views or opinions on PR Agency blogs?  Feel free to share.  Have a great day, everyone.

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