A Pod Too Far

2 February 2007

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Sometimes Insider is too cutting edge for its own good. Joanne Birtwistle examines the business benefits from podcasting, but struggles to find companies that are actually doing it.

Write about podcasts, they said. Find some innovative North West businesses that are exploiting this exciting new technology and leading the way, they said.

For those who are already lost, think of a podcast as a radio show that you can listen to on your PC, using your MP3 player or through a web browser.

Podcasting - a portmanteau word derived from Apple's iPod and the word broadcasting - is a method of publishing audio files on the Internet, allowing users to download from the source or to subscribe to a feed and receive new files automatically.

Podcasting has been around for almost five years, but it really spilled over to the main stream in June 2005, when Apple Computers integrated podcasts into its iTunes software.

Most people are at least vaguely aware of the podcasting phenomenon of 2006 that was Karl Pilkington with Steven Merchant and Ricky Gervais; a sort of comedy entertainment show based around the bizarre The World of Karl Pilkington.

But that's entertainment and Insider is about business, which seems to have been pretty slow off the mark to capitalise on the potential of the podcast as a marketing tool.

"Our statistics show that too many businesses still don't take the Internet itself seriously enough, let alone podcasting," says Jonathan Bowers, communications manager for Internet hosting company UKFast in Manchester. "But people are starting to realise that they need to be online. The next step is to work out how to convert visitors into customers and that's when things like podcasting will really take off because then you have to create a sense of trust and a sense of community."

Tim Roberts, managing director of Manchester-based I-Com agrees: "Podcasting is only one aspect of online marketing. Other aspects of that offering are more important and companies should concentrate on getting that right first."

Professional service firms along with groups such as trade bodies, charities and membership organisations seem to be leading the way, perhaps because organisations are not bound by their return on investment, while the advisory functions of professional services mean podcasts provide an opportunity to showcase expertise.

The podcasts Bowers produces, for Manchester Chamber and other clients, are mostly centred around events.

"The agenda has been about giving people a flavour of what events are like, making them available to those who could not attend and persuading more people to come along next year," says Bowers.

Angie Robinson, chief executive of Greater Manchester Chamber, sees the podcast as an exciting new venture. "Our members have found it an invaluable resource," she says. "When they are unable to attend an event in person, the podcast allows them to listen to what took place, thus opening up our events to a far wider audience."

And Bowers stresses that the podcasts are not just for Chambers members - any business can download them.

Meanwhile, law firm Pinsent Masons uses podcasts as part of its technology law website, Out-law.com. The website has been run by dedicated journalists since 2000, while its latest offering, Out-law Radio, has been running as a weekly, ten-minute news and interviews radio show since August 2006.

"A lot of podcasts are people putting a microphone in front of things like conferences or lectures," says Matthew Magee, who runs Out-law Radio. "That's brilliant because people who want that info have a place to get it and it's cheap and reasonably easy to do. But we wanted to do something a bit different, that would draw people every week to the site to download it even before they knew what was in it."

Louise Townsend, senior associate in Pinsent Mason's outsourcing technology and commercial department in Manchester, says the firm sees the podcast as a great marketing tool.

"It's a fantastic opportunity to say to someone who comes to one of our seminars or a client that we run this podcast. It generates interest in the rest of the Out-law website and the firm in general," she says.

But can't you already access all the news and views you could possibly want via the internet - and print it off for portability? "People are so busy and everybody has got a website - can you really be bothered to read another news story from yet another website?" replies Townsend.

Steven Alexander, managing director of Manchester media company First Internet, agrees. "The medium offers a fresh alternative to the overwhelming amount of text we all receive on a daily basis," he says.

But there's reluctance from businesses to try the new technology. "Because the UK is the worst in the world when it comes to change," says Roberts of I-Com, which is looking at using podcasting as a legal advice system for law firm Pannone, which bought a 30 per cent stake in I-Com in September 2006. "Podcasting won't take off until people can see the benefits to business," he says.

However, North West businesses are starting to use this technology internally, for areas such as staff training and updates.

UKFast has been compiling fortnightly training podcasts for its staff since November 2006, uploading them to iPods for staff to take away. Bowers says it helps with information flow between different departments.

"The sales guys especially tell me it can be frustrating, not being a techie, trying to understand why certain things are important," says Bowers. "So we do training podcasts for our sales team from the other person's perspective. I'll interview our technical director on the reasons why people have to update the security on their servers, for example. If we want to tell clients that, sales need to understand the importance of it first."

Pinsent Masons also has an internal podcast from its managing partner, updating staff on company news.

Townsend says it is a communication tool that is particularly useful for large companies with staff spread across many different sites. "It's a much more personal way of getting information across and people will listen to it rather than plough through another HR policy document, for example," she says.

It's still early days, but perhaps the way forward for podcasts will be as an internal communication tool rather than for customer-facing marketing. Given the fact that podcasts didn't even exist five years ago, the experts are still mulling over the possible future of the medium.

"It's going to depend on how easy it is to move this information onto different formats," says Bowers. "Depending on what devices you can download it to, it will become more accessible as the technology develops."

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