At a presentation this morning, I got a really great question. I was speaking about Podcasting for Profit, when one of the attendees stated that the drawback to podcasting is that one can’t quickly scan the content.
He went on to say that you have to download the audio or video file and listen to it to derive any benefit and this can be time consuming.
He’s absolutely right. For people on the go, having to listen or view a file in its entirety doesn’t really help save time. So, what can you do with your podcast to appeal to people on the go?
Offer the transcripts. Transcribe the audio or video and offer it in a PDF in the same spot where your audience will consume the podcast. Better yet, just include the text from the transcripts directly on your webpage. First, this is one less download a person has to make. Second, search engines can pick up the keywords in your transcription and list you in its directory. I can highly recommend e24 Transcription for your transcription needs.
Write up show notes. Show notes give a summary of your podcast at specific time points. My friend, Donna Papacosta, writes up the best show notes I’ve seen. They’re detailed and they provide links to the resources she mentions in her show. People can quickly scan your show notes and determine whether to listen to your podcast or not.
Provide a flash player. While this won’t help someone scan your audio or video content, displaying a player on your page helps people to consume your podcast without having to download it. For video podcasts, check out Rocketboom. As soon as you visit their page, the podcast starts playing. For audio podcasts, check out InsidePR. There’s an arrow that you can click on to play the file right away.
And remember – people tend to listen to audio podcasts as they are working on something else or take it on the go. So while one can’t scan information quickly when it comes to audio or video content, its portability makes podcasting attractive to consumers.
Hey Leesa, great tips! Sherman Hu here from ShermanLive.com – I’m also speaking at BlogWorldExpo in a couple of weeks, and I’m looking forward to connecting with you there in LV 😉
Show notes or transcription on page is spot on – I just have CastingWords.com transcribe my podcasts, email them to me, and I paste it in the appropriate entry after proofreading it.
(Cool thing about CastingWords is they have a service that picks up my podcasts via RSS feed, so I don’t have to manually submit each episode. And now that I’m converting my videos to MP3s too, I’m sure they’ll pick up that episode too, we’ll see)
Re: PDFs attached – I believe an icon will show up in your iTunes channel if you’re attaching PDFs in your episode entries, eh? I don’t do this right now, but it wouldn’t be too difficult at all to add it – might just try it out 😉
Leesa, can’t wait to see ya and connect at BWE2007 – Cheers!
Thanks for the mention, Leesa. I admit that writing up detailed shownotes can sometimes be a pain, but listeners appreciate it. And of course Google likes shownotes too!