How do organizations benefit from an internal podcast?
Time and again, I hear that employees can be inspired by a well-thought out and well-produced podcast. It’s a source of not just information, but a sense of community as well. Although cost-cutting is not usually an impetus for internal podcasting, it can be a result. At one global high-tech firm, switching from conference calls to podcasts saved the company more than $200,000 per year on its phone bill. In addition, employees in Asia no longer had to rise at an ungodly hour to dial in to calls originating in North America. Instead, thousands of employees across the world could time-shift and even place-shift their listening to an hour and location convenient for them.
How do you measure success?
You can count the number of downloads of your MP3 file and visits to your podcast page. More importantly, you may recognize increased employee engagement and better rapport between management and staff. One manager told me: “We’ll keep podcasting until someone tells us to stop. Both employees and leadership consider the podcast a success.” Another said: “People now know more about what’s happening in the company. We receive emails from employees asking questions that I know they wouldn’t have asked before we started the podcast.”
How is a podcast made?
You can create a basic podcast with an inexpensive headset microphone, free audio-editing software (such as Audacity on the Mac or PC, or Garage Band on the Mac) and your computer. You’ll also need a server on which to store the MP3 files, plus a feed to distribute the podcast. The easiest way to generate a feed is a blog. Serious podcasters often invest in higher-end microphones, mixers and digital recorders, but the technique for creating a podcast is the same. Some organizations handle their own recording and editing; others outsource this job. Overall, technology is secondary; content rules. When planning your podcast, you have to decide how to best meet the needs of your audience. Should you try a talk-show format, a more casual conversation between cohosts, a comment-driven show or a simple audio address from the CEO? You also need to decide on a publication frequency. Weekly? Monthly? Perhaps you can produce a limited series of five or 10 episodes around a particular topic, then launch a new series for another area of interest.
Read more at http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/sharing-stories-with-audio-podcasting-for-internal-communications-0398597#YulMxAW3sH0T14V5.99
