Reason #6 for a Corporate Podcast: It’s a Web 2.0 Thing

Written by Scott Whitney

Reason Number 6 – Web 2.0

This is an interesting “reason” because it depends largely on how you deploy your podcast as to whether or not this will work for you.

If asked to guess at the percentage of business podcasts that take advantage of the Web 2.0ness of a podcast, I would guess it’s in the single digits.

Web 2.0ness? What the hell is that? Let me clarify.

If you search for a definition of Web 2.0 in Google, you’ll get about a five million results. This tells us is that if we ask 100 people to define Web 2.0, we’ll likely get 100 different answers. To me, Web 2.0 has to do with a sense of collaboration with your visitors which is predicated on an architecture of participation. In other words, the platform that the podcast sits on is designed to make conversing with your listeners easy for them. . .and for you. The problem is that most corporate/business podcasts do not allow for a collaborative environment. Meaning, they don’t allow comments.

Allowing comments about a podcast episode demonstrates your interest in making it easy to do business with you. Here’s great example.

Interwoven, who I’ve spoken about before, decided at the launch of Intersections that they wanted to allow comments. The reasoning was simple—if a listener needed clarification or had insight not presented in an episode, they wanted to know about it. This decision lead to a perfect instance of putting out a helpful episode, getting feedback from a listener, and closing the loop with that listener.

The episode was titled, “Interwoven TeamSite’s Best Kept Secret” and featured senior product marketing manager Annie Weinberger taking the listener through a feature in TeamSite she felt was largely overlooked. About a month and a half after the episode was available online (demonstrating that new listeners were discovering the episode over a month after it went live), we received a comment:

“Do you have a set of slides that could bring me up to speed quickly? A teamsite 101.”

— Rogers Johnson

In my book, this is an invitation to have a sales conversation with somebody. Now, I’m not saying that you start SELLING here. But you do start having a conversation. . .which can certainly lead to a sale.

Annie responded with a solution. Actually, two solutions:

Hi Rogers,

Funny you should mention it, there is a WCM 101 webcast this Tuesday, March 11th and you can register to view it here –

http://interwoven.market2lead.com/go/interwoven/wcm101?tile=master&userId=Guest

If you are unable to attend and would like a link to the recording or a copy of the slides, feel free to contact me at annie@interwoven.com.

— Annie Weinberger

Annie demonstrated that Interwoven was very interested in helping Rogers get the answer he was looking for. As a matter of fact, if Annie’s first suggestion wasn’t good enough (the webcast), she provided a second solution: her personal email. Well done!

This is the kind of interaction companies like Interwoven love! And it should be something you embrace as well. It further demonstrates your company’s desire to improve Approachability. And it demonstrates that your company is aware and taking advantage of what the latest technology has to offer.

What about you? Does your podcast allow for comments? For many companies, they fear a commenter will say something unkind about a particular guest. Does that worry you?

Posted on Monday, March 31, 2008 · Leave a Comment