To Podcast or Not to Podcast, That is the Question

Howard N. Karesh, Vice President, Ketchum Midwest Corporate Practice, has written a blog post outlining four reasons to have a corporate podcast and three not to.

He says podcast...

*  If your information has a long shelf-life
*  If you don’t necessarily need your audience to access your news instantly
*  If you want your listeners to have control over when they receive your information
*  If you want to transmit information easily worldwide without the technical requirements of a live Web cast or broadcast licenses

And don't bother podcasting if...

* If your information is time-sensitive
* If you’re a publicly traded company looking to rely on podcasting to meet the SEC’s RegFD requirements
* If you need a large, live audience to receive your information at the same time, in real-time

What's disappointing about this piece is that Howard is writing about podcasts purely from the perspective that they could be a pseudo substitute for press releases or webcasts. He does not touch on how democratized the medium is and how its driving "consumer consumption" content created in a human voice. This, over time, could erode people eagerly drinking the waters that spew out from the PR jugs.

Comments

[Fenton]

People tend to write from only their own perspective so I wouldn't worry about it too much. It's just the same as how the WSJ only writes from a conservative, "is this good for the establishment" perspective. It's not a bad thing if everyone knows that's why/how they are writing.

As far as promoting podcasts to the world, this doesn't really help the world at large, but it does help the portion of the world that might use them for these specific purposes.