Seth’s Blog: Who’s There? the new ebook (free for now)
I’ve been reading Seth’s excellent new(ish) ebook and trying to relate it to the Irish experience. Obviously markets here are much, much smaller, and to a very large extent I think the way of doing business here is a helluva lot different from northern California in particular and the US in general.
I’m thinking about trying to persuade some contacts of mine here in the property business to do a podcast on their website. I know that this will be a bit of a departure for them, and might be difficult to get them to splash out the inital outlay for the requisite studio time. Probably even more of a battle will be to get their IT dept to stick it onto their website. IT departments can be very precious here, as I’ve discovered.
My biggest problem will be to convince them (and I haven’t quite figured this out for myself) why they should bother doing a podcast, as opposed to spending large amounts of money in more traditional media, namely print and TV. I guess I need to persuade them to do all three, and then atke a view further down the road.
The demographic that I would like to target is first time buyers. These are typically in their late 20s or early 30s and are mostly employed (I guess). So, is there an advantage getting them to download a podcast instead of opening a newspaper on a Wednesday or Thursday?
Yes.
Surely you’re not suggesting podcasting as a replacement for their current communications efforts? People want to see what they’re buying rather than be subjected to the usual slesperson babble, Video blogging would be a better solution. If they were to podcast they should give advice to first time buyers like what to check around the property, where is good for investment, etc. Unfortunately I don’t think there’s an advantage of getting them to download a podcast instead of opening a newspaper.
No, absolutely not as a replacement but as an addition to existing media.
There are various ways to embellish the experience that I can think of but won’t go into here partly because I haven’t fully figured out the mechanics and partly because I’m absolutely knackered after the Shark Awards and can barely string two words together. And also because I don’t want to fully share the idea just yet. I notice you’re in the PR business Piaras so I’m assuming you’ve had similar ideas for your own clients.
In talking to my missus, she’s of the opinion that this means of delivery is way too progressive for a (let’s face it) conservative industry and would be better suited to a different sector.
Video blogging? Bandwidth is excessive for those without broadband.
More anon.
FM104 have started podcasting so hopefully some of my clients will soon.
One thing I thought of in the mean time would be to have an accompanying set of Flickr photos which listeners could go through with the podcast, but that’s limited to people with iPod photos.
But hey wouldn’t it be cool if you were in the property business and could say that you were in the iTunes store 😀
Here’s an interesting link on 20 creative uses for podcasts that you might find useful: http://prblog.typepad.com/strategic_public_relation/2005/09/20_creative_use.html