20 Creative Uses for Podcasts

As most of you may should know, For Immediate Release is THE de facto public relations podcast. If you don't listen to it, you should. Hosts Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson have inspired me with their tireless, unflagging passion for the medium.

While I’ve been listening to podcasts and following the technology’s uber fast-paced evolution, I’m now considering ways to integrate it into a communications plan. Based on target audience and strategy, it can be a very effective communications channel. There are plenty of ways podcasts might be implemented.

Here are just 20 examples. This list is based on a smart (beverage-focused) post from Influx on ways branded podcasts might be used to engage customers.

1. Airlines: Travel and destination guides
2. Apparel/Retail: Behind the scenes at fashion shows, interviews with models and designers, guide to the season
3. Automotive: Test drives of new models with team drivers, interviews with designers, race reports from behind the scenes-NASCAR, F1, rally
4. Beverage Stores: Festive reviews of selected wines, spirits and beers
5. Books/Music Retail: Guides to summer or Christmas releases, interviews with bands and authors, sample readings from authors to promote an in-store appearance
6. Financial Services: Retirement guides, investing tips, planning for college education
7. Golf Equipment: Guides to courses, interviews with sponsored athletes
8. Grocery Stores: Interviews and recipes from well-known chefs
9. Health Insurers: Wellness tips, meditation guides, nutrition guides
10. Home Improvement Stores: Step-by-step guides to home improvement
11. Hotels: Destination guides, jogging routes, music to jog to, walking tours of cities
12. Micro-Brews: Interviews with the brew master
13. Movie Studios: Interviews with actors or directors, movie making production diaries 14. Sportswear: Interviews with sponsored athletes, event diaries (Olympics, World Cup), and interviews with designers, fitness and training tips
15. Travel and Tourism: Guides to destinations, travel tips
16. Vineyards: Interviews with wine-makers
17. Whisky Makers: Interviews with the makers, tours of the distilleries
18. Video Games- Interviews with game designers, production diaries
19. Higher Education: In a recent show, Shel mentions how Duke University uses podcasts to communicate with incoming students and provide them with lectures. Duke University is one of many schools podcasting.
20. Investor Relations: Consider how many earnings webcasts are out there. Consider how much more cost-effective a podcast can be. A podcast also gives the listener several options on how/when/where they listen to it. Shel also mentioned this in his recent presentation about two seconds after I also considered the idea.

Still not convinced or inspired? Steve Jobs provided a list of podcasts in his recent iTunes review:

* News: CBS, CNN, Dow Jones Marketwatch, MSNBC, PBS, Slate, Wall Street Journal
* TV: Fox Entertainment, Showtime, Ebert & Roeper
* Sports: Major League Baseball, Lance Armstrong
* Arts: Museum of Modern Art (Sorry Shel, once Jobs calls it a podcast, it’s a podcast)
* Government: The White House, House Democrats, Senate Republicans
* Corporate: Cisco, Purina

Thanks to Piers Fawkes at PSFK for the Influx link.

tags: podcasting, blog, public relations, PR, advertising, marketing, branding, brand, consumer-generated media

Comments

[Toby]

Here's a creative delivery of podcasts. [itvt] http://www.itvt.com is including links to podcasts in their newsletters. The link opens the podcast it does not take you back to a website or blog. Very cool

[Marshall Kirkpatrick]

Basically, any interesting audio content that doesn't need to be consumed live is a potential podcast. It just takes a little imagination and knowledge of any field to think of what you could make a podcast about. Perhaps podcasts will become more ubiquitous than blogs.

[Roomy Naqvy]

Podcasting is a great thing. Yes, any audio content that is not live can be termed a podcast and with some intelligence, it can be a very rich resource.

Roomy Naqvy

www.roomynaqvy.com
http://roomynaqvy.blogspot.com/

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