In my “Writing for the Wired World” workshops, I begin by pointing out a fundamental difference between business websites and everything else on the web.
When you build a family site (birthday party pictures and the like) or a fan site (if you love your Mini Cooper, for instance) or a performance art site (fun with Flash, for example), your visitors are happy to click here and there to see what you’re offering. When people come to a business site, however, they know exactly what they want. With laser-like intensity, they will zero in (or, at least, try to) on the answer to their question, the solution to their problem. Visitors to business sites have agendas. They’re not interested in following any links that won’t get them to what brought them.
Similar distinctions apply to business podcasting — particularly B2B podcasting, where your customer is another business instead of an individual customer or consumer. There’s no point in pretending to be “Dawn and Drew” when your audience has come for useful business content. (Besides, if they want to listen to “Dawn and Drew,” they can. )
That said, it’s also worth noting that your listeners spend most of their time listening to podcasts other than yours. There are podcasting practices you should learn and adhere to that, so far, many business podcasts are ignoring. Most busines podcasts, for example, don’t have associated blogs. More on that later.
Not that there are a lot of B2B podcasts out there yet. I count maybe half a dozen (from Oracle, Jupiter, Eric Schwartzman, and BMC Software, for example). But podcasting is exploding and businesses are going to figure out sooner rather than later that a podcast could be a useful B2B communication channel.
With that in mind, I started jotting down some guidelines for B2B podcasting. As luck would have it, I wound up with 10:
Be relevant
If you’re considering a B2B podcast, you’ve probably already given some consideration to a theme and an audience. One of the no-brainer podcasts no business has A podcast for this audience helps elevate your content above the dozens or even hundreds of other companies sending content through traditional channels. It’s not enough to just focus on this audience; you have to add some value. You don’t need to disclose material information for this podcast to be relevant, but you should offer insights into why your organization is a worthy investment. You might, for instance, pick a focus of your R&D efforts and give it a bit more attention that usual, talk about customer satisfaction metrics, or conduct an interview with one of your thought leaders.
Under some circumstances, you might be tempted to use your podcast to address issues that have reared their ugly heads. It’s easy to view the podcast as a broad business communication tool. It’s not. Podcasting is all about narrowcasting, particularly when you’re dealing with a business audience. Resist the temptation to digress or risk losing an audience that listens because of the highly focused content you deliver. Consider IBM’s podcast, which delves into the future of some aspect of life (homes, cars, shopping) through the eyes of two company thought leaders on the subject. How many people would unsubscribe if IBM used an episode to explain its labor issues? That’s not why people subscribed.
I’ve heard some comments recently suggesting that business podcasts should be more entertaining. One pundit went so far as to suggest that business podcasts should play songs. Don’t you believe it. Someone who listens to the IBM podcast wants to know what the future holds and they want to hear it from experts working on real-world applications. Listeners to my podcast may argue, “You play music.” Yes, Neville and I play a podsafe tune at the end of every show. But we’re not a B2B podcast; there is no business behind our show. (We’re just two guys doing a podcast.) We also save the music for the end of the show, so those who don’t want to hear music can stop listening when the music starts. (Incidentally, we play music to support the independent artists whose efforts are one of the biggest drivers of podcasting and because it’s our show and we want to.)
Be infotaining
While you don’t want to turn your B2B podcast into a top 40 music show, you do want to employ enough entertainment elements to make it interesting to listen to. Solid content is not compelling if it is delivered by a lone monotonous voice. Use musical intros and outros, introduce new features, and generally take advantage of the medium. Adopt a format for your show. “For Immediate Release” is a co-hosted discussion with audio commentary from other sources. You could do an interview show, a panel discussion, or commentary by company thought leaders. Listeners get to like a format. They also like it if you shake it up from time to time.
Build and engage community
There’s a podcasting myth that suggests one of podcasting’s great limitations is its one-way, top-down nature. Hogwash. Podcasts routinely build communities of listeners the members of which interact with the podcaster. Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code offers a great example. Curry expressed an interest in biodiesel and asked for input. Listeners sent what they knew by email and audio comment. Other listeners commented on what the first round of listeners said. Curry responded and asked more questions. The biodiesel discussion has been going on for weeks on DSC. Neville and I have worked hard to make “For Immediate Release” listener-driven, with as much as half of each show based on themes raised by our listeners.
There are no competitors…okay, there are some competitors
If you spend your time bashing your competitors, your listeners will unsubscribe in droves. They’re coming for insights, not an us-vs.-them commercial. As my mother (and yours, too, probably) used to say, if you can’t say something nice about somebody, don’t say anything. In fact, if a competitor introduces a podcast or says something worthwhile in a blog, point to it. Neville and I don’t see the growing number of PR-focused podcasts as competition. We even link to them in what we call our “podroll,” a list of other communication-themed podcasts on our show blog. Just because your audience is made up of customers doesn’t mean you shouldn’t recognize the interconnectedness of the medium and your listeners’ hunger for useful and interesting content.
Not that I think Boston Consulting Group would ever welcome a new podcast by McKinsey & Company into the podosphere. Short of that, though, it pays dividends to be part of a bigger podcasting community.
Don’t advertise or sell
Nobody wants to subscribe to and download a commercial. You can brand your product, service, or company by being the provider of useful information. You should avoid turning your podcast into an advertisement at all costs, regardless of what your throwback marketing VP wants.
Be authentic
Businesses often are inclined to overproduce their media, striving to be as good as – or better than – mainstream public media. I remember talking to the manager of one company’s video production operation who said his baseline was a local newscast; his work could never, no matter what, be worse than a typical local newscast. While podcast listeners do want to be entertained, their primary interest is in content, not polish. A podcast hosted by voice talent reading a script will be dismissed, while listening to a real engineer or designer or brand manager — replete with all his “ums” and “uhs” — will be compelling, as long as he’s talking about something the listener cares about. (Besides, you can edit out the worst mistakes.)
Be mindful of your listeners’ time
Depending on whom you talk to, podcasts shouldn’t exceed 20 or 40 minutes. Neville and I routinely run 70 to 80 minutes. But again, while “The Hobson and Holtz Report” is about business, it’s not from a business. With a business podcast, you’re asking your customer (or prospective customer) to give her attention to your organization’s content. It’s an exchange. Don’t ask for too much of it. Make sure you fill the time you do have with something useful enough to make the exchange worthwhile.
Integrate your podcast into the blogosphere
Outside the pseudo podcasts from the mainstream media (repackaged pre-broadcast radio content), you’ll be hard-pressed to find a podcast that doesn’t have an associated blog. So far, most of the business podcasts haven’t emulated this practice with the exception of GM, where the Fastlane podcast is just part of the Fastlane blog. Your podcast blog page contains show notes, another tactic common among indie podcasters but missing from businesses. Listeners appreciate the hell out of good show notes. Most important, but inviting comments on each show, you more effectively build that community of listeners naysayers insist you can’t build with a podcast.
As I said at the beginning, I’m sure I’ve overlooked some important guidelines. What have I missed?
Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.
As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.
