Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:07 — 5.5MB)

I’ve been meaning to do this for the longest time. Start a podcast.

Two reasons-

1. My love for audio (and Radio): I started off with radio while straight out of school- though obviously at a very amateurish level. Somehow never picked up. And  to think of it, I thought I had all the qualities to be on radio – except for the voice, the delivery and the intonation. (You know how it is- Life is not fair- true talent never wins…and all that.) But now that the Internet makes it possible to satisfy my urges of vocal gratification, I can relive that dream- about 12 years later than I should have- and subject you to my thoughts in manifestations other than text
2. A peculiar learning from this was that earlier I thought blogging takes too much time. Voice can be faster. Just record your voice and put it up there. Right? WRONG. I could have written 10 posts (or more) in the time that it took me to being this out. And to say that usually my posts are not hurried- is a gross understatement.

Either which ways- here is the first podcast episode (or webisode) -at the beginning of this post- just press play. About 12 minutes – quite squeezable when you are in the mood for information snacking.

I have always thought that podcasts and blogs need to be monetized- in a way that is appropriate. I think one major hurdle to achieve that objective is marketers ignorance. Another one is the content creators incapacity to market themselves well. But that is another story. The main issue is the lack of standards and ignorance. Chicken and egg situation actually. Usually problems like this wait for ‘scale’ to be solved. Marketers scramble for answers only when the right scale is achieved.

While on the topic of  Social Media Channels like blogs and podcasts, the traditional metrics of reach and frequency won’t work, and more often than not, you will have to justify by qualitative metrics at best. So here I attempt to highlight the right metrics for marketers. And hope that user generated content is monetized in a way that it is worthy of.

There actually is going to be a series of webisodes on this one topic- three to be exact. Following which, we will have other topics- hopefully some suggested by you.

To take a perspective- I am going to analyze three of my favorite podcast channels from back home in Singapore.

• Tech 65
• Mr Brown Show
• Morning Jam (or the Shareen and Joe show)

I analyze them on the basis of their web weightage (Page Rank), blog buzz (inbound links from other blogs), Buzz within the podcast channel (Comment to webisode post ratio), frequency of posts, and average time per podcast. Of course I will be covering some qualitative criterion as well.

Not perfect. But in the absence of many other criterion- should give you a reasonably good insight rather than go by gut feel. Or worse- scrap spending on this media at all- because there are no parameters or justifications.

In the first podcast of this series- I cover Tech65- a technology podcast/videocast from Singapore by a bunch of young lads. Some details and how they fare on each of the above highlighted parameters.

Do let me know what are the other things that interest you- in case you are marketer or a content creator. Meanwhile, I get down to creating some more content and putting in more distribution channels for the podcast. Can only get better with time. Till then-  Enjoy!

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tranchis/3317089091/sizes/m/