The Professional Podcasts offer a broad range of public relations and communications services to help clients enhance their professional image. We have extensive expertise in new media technologies and “social media” such as blogging, podcasting, social network sites, and microblogging tools like Twitter.
Q) Tell us a little bit about your site. What inspired you to start it?
A) I’m a former corporate PR guy. Left the corporate world at the end of 2004, and realized after listening to many podcasts that there was a lot of poor quality production being done. I had background in radio, and know how to produce and edit news stories for radio. I learned digital tools and began focusing on podcasting as the core competency of my consultancy.
Q) Why do you believe new media resources (i.e. blogs, podcasts, internet radio stations) have become so popular? How have they been beneficial to artists? How have they been detrimental?
A) People don’t go to the Yellow Pages to find the services they need. They generally don’t even go to a website of a firm. They go to Google (and to a lesser extent other search engines, but pretty much Google). And the traditional model of going to a record store to buy a CD doesn’t bring in any traffic for a promising new artist.
Firms — or musicians — that understand this dynamic need to ensure that they show up in the first page or so (mostly first page) of a google search. There are several ways to do that, but Paid Ad-Words is expensive if you have a popular search term. A better way to do it is to create compelling “rich media” content like video and audio podcasts, and online presentations and blogs, and to update the content on a regular, frequent basis. Google and other search robots love pages that update frequently (blogs) have rich content (photos, videos, audio, RSS feeds) and lots of hyperlinks (blogs, podcast show notes pages, etc.) to other sites and resources.
The idea is to give up some of your creative content for free to the Internet world, in return for the visibility as a thought leader or savvy musician. Properly programmed, we can position a podcasting client as the ultimate resource for people who want to know how their particular industry works, or how consumers of that product or service can educate themselves to be more informed about using or comparing products or services in that sector. It’s all part of an overall marketing effort that focuses on where your potential audiences are, not where your business owners may want them to be or think they are.
Look at the top 100 podcasts listed in iTunes, and you’ll find the vast majority are professionally produced by major names in traditional broadcast media. People want great content produced with broadcast quality production values, by trusted brands. To the extent that your brand has that goodwill, content produced in podcast form will attract viewers and listeners.
Lots of companies still think they will grow new customers/clients by putting ads in the newspaper. Most people under 35 don’t even read a daily newspaper, and a significant percentage of them only watch broadcast television by time-shifting technology (Tivo and DVR) and don’t even glance at commercials.. And like it or not (if you are a 50-something business owner, you probably don’t like it!) you’re not going to reach those vendor-specifying middle and senior managers in traditional ways.
Q) Media 2.0 has changed the way artists communicate with fans. Where do you envision online communication going next? Any thoughts on what Media “3.0” will look like?
A) I think it’s all about engaging in conversations, getting the audience to feel a connection with the artists. Look at Country artists who always make themselves available front of house after a concert to meet and thank their fans. That’s huge. Doing it online by actually interacting is also a great way to reach the fans and make them feel special.
Q) What does an artist have to do to get your attention? Are their specific characteristics that you look for?
A) We like to interview artists whose music we like, and our musical tastes are very eclectic, as you can see from the podcast selections.
Q) What do you ultimately hope to accomplish with your site?
A) We’re looking to promote the artists’ creative activities, but also to demonstrate our ability to produce thoughtful, interesting podcast programming. If we can do it for our own account, we can do it for a client.
Check out ProfessionalPodcasts.com for more information.