I recently gave a talk at an event sponsored by the Tampa Bay Technology Forum. My talk was about web marketing strategies, best practices and trends. In the trends section, I discussed Web 2.0 including social networking, blogging and podcasts.
The audience was comprised mostly of marketing managers and small business owners in the Tampa Bay area. There were about 35 people in attendance. I was not suprised to learn that most marketing managers did not have a strong understanding of podcasts. Many in attendance admitted they use an MP3 player, but only a few acknowledged they regularly listen to podcasts.
I spoke about how podcast use is growing in popularity, as evidenced by a recent survey conducted by Knowledgestorm and Universal McCann, citing that 32% of (business and IT) respondents have increased their use of podcasts in the past six months. Furthermore, 72% of respondents listened to podcasts on technology topics more than once.
The survey also said that 55% of respondents would be willing to consume white papers and analyst reports as podcasts. The biggest eye opener in this survey is that 57% said their biggest challenge with podcasts is the scarcity of them.
Wow, if that’s not an opportunity knocking I don’t know what is. Marketers need to understand that people are starving for meaningful information in an educational format. The content is the advertising and delivering content in a podcast format is extremely effective and growing in popularity as this survey shows.
I will soon practice what I preach by delivering a podcast version of the talk I gave on August 9th. Stay tuned…
