The World of Podcasting: It's Practice and Purpose

Not too long ago I didn't even know what a podcast was. Then, suddenly it seemed like everyone was talking about them, telling me to check out this podcast and that podcast. Now it seems that podcasts are the hot new tool for delivery of information not just for entertainment purposes, but for practical ones as well. You can subscribe to a podcast on any number of topics and updates will be automatically sent right to your computer. And get this: now there even is an online social network for the discussion of podcasting deemed the World Podcast Forum. One thing is for sure, podcasting is definitely hot!

Just about everyone with a computer now has the technology to create their own podcast, but what is interesting is how various industries and corporations are going about using this new technology.

The corporate world has realized that podcasts offer a great new method of communicating with the public and those individuals that desire to hear their message on a deeper level. The truth of the matter is, no one is going to listen to a corporate or industry podcast if they don't have some sort of previous interest in the message being offerred. So the key is for these podcasts to offer a supplemental message that can appeal to their niche audience and tell them something they didn't know about before. Then, maybe, if they're lucky, members of this niche audience will go out and tell other people about what they heard.

Recently I listened to a couple of podcasts from the public relations and advertising industries. Edelman, one of the leading public relations firms in the country has very advanced website offerings compared to most of its competitors with numerous links to podcasts and blogs produced by employees. After listening to a podcast on ethics in social media communications, I was very intrigued, and realized that even though only a select group of people would ever actually hear the material--word of its content still had the ability to spread. So I went on Google to see just how much talk was out there about Edelman's commentary on new ethics standards and found that over 30 media-related blogs had mentioned it.

The influence of the blogosphere in the spread of information cannot be underestimated. However, neither can the influence of podcasts. This is a major source of material for many bloggers, and that is why this form of communication is truly valuable to corporations and industry professionals.