I was asked recently what a podcast is.  This was an excellent reminder that not everything in my little world of technology is as mainstream as I sometimes tend to think that it is.  While I’ve been listening to (and watching) podcasts for a couple of years now, apparently it’s still a niche segment.  I went looking through some of my archived writings and found this article that I wrote last year.  I don’t remember whether I even posted this anywhere, or if it was simply an exercise, but I thought that it was worth dusting off, and posting here.

Enjoy!

The internet is filled with a seemingly endless barrage of buzz words.  One of the more recent to cross over from techno-geek-speak to mainstream-user-gab is “podcasting”. If you’re not familiar with the term, the name alone probably conjures up images from some B-movie horror flick of yesteryear.  But there’s nothing corny or scary about podcasting, or podcasts, as they are known.  In fact, podcasts can be casual, educational, even downright entertaining. And, if you’re a small business owner, a podcast is the perfect tool to help build an online community around your company’s brand.

So what exactly IS a podcast?  Without being overly technical, a podcast is simply an audio or video episode broadcast over the internet.  Listeners or viewers typically subscribe to a broadcast feed using one of many podcatcher download programs, and consume the content in whatever manner best suits them – on their computer or mobile media player.  Don’t let the “pod” component of the name “podcast” confuse you.  Although the name appears to tie in closely with Apple’s iPod media player, they are mutually exclusive.  You can listen to, or view, podcasts on virtually any MP3 player (although it must have video capability if you are going to download video podcasts). Don’t own an MP3 player? You can still subscribe to audio or video podcasts and play them on your computer.  Don’t worry.  We’ll look at how to subscribe to, and play, podcasts in future posts.

Now that you have a basic understanding of what a podcast is, the big question is how might it benefit your business?  It must be clearly stated that podcasting is only one component of your overall internet marketing strategy.  It is not a silver bullet.  A business must still create awareness and demand for its products and services. Even the best podcast will fail if people are unaware of its existence.  That being said, as part of an existing internet marketing strategy, a well-crafted podcast can be enough to propel that business to the next level.  Consider this:  In subscribing to your podcast, the audience has made a conscious decision to willingly interact with your business.  By this point, you have already achieved the most difficult aspect of your marketing. You have turned a casual observer into an engaged listener or viewer.  The relationship between business and consumer has been forged, and your podcast has the potential to strengthen that relationship, depending on how successful you are at conveying your message.

Businesses can use podcasts in many ways.  Some will deliver periodic updates, containing company news or special promotions.  Others will take a more systematic approach, and schedule regular episodes dealing with industry news, or offering additional value to their existing service offerings in an attempt to keep the customer engaged, and draw them back repeatedly. However you decide to structure your podcast, you must ensure that it remains consistent with your business message.

At the end of the day, podcasting is merely another medium for creating a one on one relationship with your customer. If implemented correctly, it just might be the tool you’ve been waiting for to differentiate yourself, and rise above your competitors.

In our next installment, we’ll look at where to get started, and how to become comfortable with the podcasting tools available to your business.

Hi folks! Trying a new app for my iPhone. It’s called Dragon dictation and essentially what happens is I talk into my phone like I normally would and everything that I say gets written out on the screen. Curious to see how well this thing works. So far everything that I’ve tried seems be working actually really really well. I’m even impressed when I swear it changes that into a non-swearing word which I think is neat. So going to try and just copy this into the blog and see what happens and who knows, maybe this will be a recurring thing!

It’s been awhile since I’ve checked for updates for my iPhone 3GS. I had completely forgotten that a couple of months ago Apple released a brand new OS for my iPhone. So I let it do its thing, and waited to see what would happen…

I have to say that OS 4 is pretty slick. As I’m typing this, my iPhone is downloading a minor upgrade to OS 4.02, so hopefully it survives that with flying colours. There is an entire list of improvements in OS 4, but here are some of the things that I like.

• I can zoom with my camera phone now. I never understood why I couldn’t do that before, but with the new Operating System, zooming is as simple as the “spread your finger and thumb” movement on the screen.
• Character count in txt messaging. Maybe this doesn’t mean much to most people, but sometimes I send a tweet with my txt, rather than with a Twitter client. Before, I had a guess how many characters I had typed. Not anymore!
• Spell check in txt messaging. Gotta love those little red lines under my words.
• Unified inbox. This is a HUGE improvement for me. I’m used to having everything dumped into one Gmail address, which is fine for checking mail, but got to be cumbersome on the iPhone when it came time to replying. Now I can separate my email addresses and have the mail come into different inboxes, or into a single unified one. Believe me, it’s nice.
• Threaded email messages. I’m still getting used to this. I’m a little old fashioned when it comes to how I like my email displayed. Sometimes there is a single message within a thread that I want to keep… I still think I prefer non-threaded email, but I have to admit, I haven’t disabled this feature. I’m still working on getting used to it.
• Multitasking apps. From what I read this isn’t true multitasking, but it still feels like it. Double click the button and a little window appears where you can see what it running, like the task manager in Windows. You can even close applications that way.

There’s a bunch of stuff under the hood, but those are the things that I actually use. I will have to say… my iPhone did start to act a little weird in the days after I upgraded the OS. There was one point that I thought that it had locked up solid, and I really wasn’t sure how to unlock it, but after a couple of minutes it seemed to reboot itself.

One very annoying feature of the new OS… My phone no longer charges when I dock it with the nice little radio that I was given for Christmas! I know that Apple wants you to use their own hardware for charging, but this really pisses me off! It was working before in that radio (There was a second radio that it never did charge in, although my Nano would charge just fine), but after the OS upgrade… nope. It obviously still plays, but the charging function is disabled now. Thanks Apple… I appreciate that…

I was asked recently about the little picture that appears beside my name (and one or two other people’s names) in the comments section of the blog.  It’s not a function of the blog itself, but actually a free service called a Gravatar.  Avatars have been around forever, and Gravatars take that to a slightly higher level by associating a Globally Recognized Avatar to your account, based on the email address that you use in the comment field of a blog.

It’s incredibly easy to set up a Gravatar.  Just create a free account at Gravatar.com, and select a picture to associate with it.  I have several Gravatars associated to different email addresses, depending on what blog I am commenting on.. but chances are you will have only the one.  Just make sure that whatever email address you register at Gravatar.com, that’s the one that you use when commenting on a blog.  Then your Gravatar will appear almost instantly beside your posts, even old posts that you have written.  And any time that you want to change the picture (something I’ve been meaning to do now for awhile) you can just log into your account at Gravatar.com and upload another one.

I’d certainly love to see more people using it.  It really makes your comments stand out!

I’ve been trading a few emails back and forth with Yasmine Mustafa, founder of 123LinkIt, trying to get the plugin to work properly on this blog.  We’re not quite there yet, but I’m confident that the issue will get resolved.  Actually, at the moment, I have a nagging suspicion that it might be a user-related problem, rather than a plugin one.  I have to do a little more testing to do with a different browser (something that I am unable to do at this moment), and if that’s what it turns out to be… open wide… insert foot.  Hell, I might as well insert both of them!  It’ll be a little embarrassing, considering I posted last month that I was giving up on the plugin.  But that’s fine.  When I look at some of the recent posts/tweets, the fact that I’m troubleshooting with a female CEO of a startup internet company, who doesn’t know me from a hole in the wall… yeah… I cringe.  Welcome to my world…

I will say this, though… when I look at what they’re doing, I’m more than a little jealous.  No, that’s not a job application.  I’ll gladly leave that space to 123LinkIt.  But the dream… yeah… Jealous.

And anyone who knows me well should understand what I mean by that.

I can’t say that my impression of Facebook has changed very much in the weeks following my account creation.  I find navigating the security settings to be an exercise in anger management.  I used to consider myself a bit of an expert when it comes to user interface navigation.  Not anymore!  Facebook has bested me more than once… to the point that I had to actually ask someone for help before I decided to call it a day and delete my account!  But I think that I have it sufficiently locked down now. 

So last night I decided to add some pictures.  Honestly, it isn’t so much for anyone else, as it is for me.  I’m always leery of losing pictures due to hardware failures, and lost backups.  I know that there are a chunk of pictures of the kids that are gone forever, and I don’t ever want to see that happen again.  So an online storage option probably isn’t a bad idea.  I had considered Flickr, but I would have to create an account there, and figured that I have this shiny new Facebook account now… might as well use it.

Some people continue to send me messages from within Facebook.  I hope that it’s nothing urgent because it’s probably the last place that I am going to check for correspondence.  Better to send a smoke signal or carrier pigeon.

And I just love all the “You might know THIS person” notifications that I get…  Umm…  no, I don’t know that person.  Thanks though.

Just wait until I try Farmville!

As many of you know (and fewer even care), I officially became the last man on Earth to create a Facebook account.  For years I’ve ignored the fad, and opted to stick to my email and blog.  Sure, I adopted Twitter before probably anyone else reading this, but that was different.  (Oh yeah, don’t go by my AboutStephen account, because my defunct Dunnik account was much older.)  But Facebook?  Nah… just wasn’t for me.

But after years of listening to “Are you on Facebook?  You should get a Facebook account. All my pics are on Facebook. Come play Farmville on Facebook!” I’d had enough.  So I clicked my way through to that damn site, and you know what?

It’s worse than I thought.

I’m trying to turn off all the intrusive annoyances.  I can’t seem to scratch my ass without it notifying my friends.  I log in and see a panel of faces of people I MIGHT know, because they somehow crossed paths with someone else at some point.  I kept getting prompted to add things to my wall, when all I want to do it knock it down.  I can’t find anyone I search for, even when they tell me that they’re on Facebook.

“Your Facebook profile sucks.” I’ve been told more than one.

Yup.  It sure does.  I put a picture there to make it easier for people to find me, so they can then tell me that it sucks.

You’re welcome.

I’ve been using Blip.fm now for awhile now and I have to say that it’s growing on me.

Blip.fm is an online music service that probably does a lot more than I give it credit for… since about all I use it for is to broastcast what I’m currently listening to across my Twitter account.  I know that I could just simply send a tweet about what I’m listening to (not that anyone cares; I realize that) but I like how Blip.fm creates a short URL and posts it within my blipped tweet.  Someone can then click on the link, and either listen to the song, or watch the video, depending on what I’ve linked it to.  Is it overly useful?  Nah, probably not.  But for someone like me, who listens to music on a somewhat frequent basis (ie all the freakin’ time) it can be fun.

I liked it so much that I actually shelled out $3 for the iPhone app, so I can blip when I’m on the move too!  How exciting is that?