After spending an eternity working on, in and researching audio marketing, I’m convinced today we’re in the era of podcasting 3.0 – and I want to tell you why.
First I’m going to deliver a summary for the time shy. If you’re vaguely interested in finding out more, the rest will follow below.
Podcasting 1.0 can best be described as whoo, look, someone’s invented a way we can share audio and video online with a way for people to get the latest episodes automagically! Insert smiley here! In a long ago time, even so far back as 1998, folks started putting out audio shows to download via the internet. Saucy sonic strumpets Dawn and Drew were among the first, and their 962nd and final show was broadcast in May, 2004. I feel a little uncomfortable referring to anything predating 2005 as strictly a podcast, though, since purists (who have axes and can perform ninja assassin moves in their sleep) insist it can’t be a podcast unless it’s subscribable.
And it was only really with the birth of the second iteration of Really Simple Syndication (RSS) in 2005, which was largely the work of Dave Winer, that added ‘enclosure’ tags to this form of publishing frequently updated works through a ‘feed reader’. Google Reader is an example of such a reader, as is Apple iTunes – which formally adopted Podcasts (well, why wouldn’t it?) in a 2006 release.
Interesting fact: It was a Brit, Aled Williams in The Guardian newspaper, who is credited with coining the term ‘podcast’.
Podcasting 2.0 can best be described as ooh look, everything’s all bright and beautiful and since we’re now in the swinging sixties of the web, we can share everything so easily and therefore make all our shows be more popular and relevant than ever before. Podcasting 2.0 is the convergence of liberated syndication, social media, multimedia thanks to the likes of YouTube, and simplification of consuming content.
While engagement played a part in the birth of podcasting, it was this second phase of the medium that really brought the potential of podcasts to the fore. Facebook and Twitter helped podcasters gather tribes, while the proliferation of VoiP services helped bring producer and consumer closer together sharing feedback and webinars to further the message.
Interesting fact: According to RAJAR, a radio measurement service based in the UK, 20% of smartphone users downloaded a radio application in 2010. More than half of those consumers use them at least weekly. And so the pump is primed.
Podcasting 3.0 is where I believe the infinite potential of sharing ‘live’ content is primed to be harnessed by the business population in order that it can bring alive its brands and deeply immerse its customers into the fabric of every switched-on organisation. A phrase you’ll be hearing a lot more from me in coming months is ‘if you couldn’t care more about your customers, your customers couldn’t care less about you.’ Audio marketing is bringing together the desire to forge stronger links with customers with the tools at our disposal to make it happen.
To harness all the knowledge we have of our customers through the aforementioned social media channels and, with the help of the new CEO – Chief Editorial Officer – role as advocated by Brian Solis, devise a stunningly-effective social strategy encompassing audio, real-world interaction and sophisticated relationship management techniques that thanks to great advances in web effectiveness, we can now integrate into any business environment.
Podcasting 3.0 is where the world wakes up and your customers whoop. It takes storyboarding of your relationship, cajoling as much information about your customer tribes from your existing client connectivity, and immense drive to unleash your unique passion and personality for your business on the world to reap the abundance of treasures waiting to be claimed in your name.
Interesting fact: If you’re not ready to jump on the triple totems of interactive marketing, relationship marketing and experiential marketing offered collectively by audio marketing, your business may soon be usurped by those who are.
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Despite the origins of episodic audio presentations being credited to the late 1990s it was Really Simple Syndication (RSS) 2.0 that signalled the birth as we know it of podcasting 1.0. At that time (around 2005) podcasting was a way of offering content whenever your listeners had time to share your shows. RSS meant – and is still used today so – audiences can subscribe to your audio content so they don’t have to keep coming back to find out when the latest episodes have been published.
RSS, when matched with an RSS reader such as Google Reader, automatically delivers the latest stuff you’ve subscribed to when the creator uploads the latest version – an electronic equivalent of being a magazine subscriber.
And thus, podcasting 1.0 was born.
Podcasting 2.0 dovetailed nicely with what we know as Web 2.0 – when things got social. When the web was very little, it was pages and pages of text, and links to other pages. When the internet was growing up and people started to share stuff across the web and really engage with each other in a global community, it became Web 2.0. Social media is a perfect example of the internet’s second era.
Podcasting 2.0 meant your listeners weren’t just consumers, or as I like to say, iPad junkies. With Podcasting 2.0 there was no walled garden around the podcaster, whether they were Fox News or the guy who lives down the street who creates radio shows about crotcheting. Everything became social. Interaction was everywhere. Using Talkshoe, BlogTalkRadio, Justin.tv, uStream, AudioBoo, Cinchcast, Soundcloud and others, the audience was the show. Name me one podcast that is adored today which doesn’t put its audience left, right and centre of the game, and I’ll laugh hard at its missed opportunities.
Listeners and broadcasters are on the same team. They talk, they meet up and discuss common interests. The engagement is intense. Podcasters have the most amazing relationships, sharing joyous occasions and sad news. Podcasting 2.0 was bringing the whole family round the table to dine on nourishing audio and video content, sharing those stories in real time and worrying not so much about timeshifting because there was always a new episode just around the corner (you don’t podfade if you’re a bona fide practitioner in the Podcasting 2.0 way).
Which brings us neatly to the current time: The age of Podcasting 3.0.
Podcasting, though Podcamps are still prevalent and Apple iTunes has heartily backed the concept by promoting any audio adventure through its Podcasting pages served to billions of users worldwide, is still a relatively alien phenomenon.
Forget for a moment the rising tide of Facebook’s membership tally. Ignore if you will that smartphones make it easier than ever to Foursquare your location to burglars and buddies alike.
I hallucinate that right now social media in isolation is atrophying in appeal. I stress this philosophy applies only when referencing social media as an isolated phenomenon. I spoke to dozens of people in my home town at a big launch event last night and at least 90% of them couldn’t remotely care for what social media offered their business. This, despite Twitter, Facebook et al being headline news in the B2B and B2C markets for a good few years.
Social media is connectivity, social media is engagement. But as a business-building platform on its own? Cautious about that.
Traditional thinking is starting to reemerge. Look around at some of the most popular digital products of the day and they’re all about harking back to the core elements of entrepreneurism: Of developing amazing synergies with your customers, fostering loyalty at every opportunity by being front of mind throughout the ever-longer (ideally) customer lifecycle. These are tactics we’ve used since cave paintings were sold on the open market.
So while podcasting and social media feed each other to a degree, I hallucinate Podcasting 3.0 is all about consolidating its very essence – solid, often incredible content – and making it valuable and visible to those markets who aren’t typically always-on, always-connected to the internet.
Because let’s face it, whether you like it or not, the biggest consumers by some degree are the geeks, the wannabe nerds, the digital product buyers and the eminently technically-minded of the general population.
The Infinite Dial – Navigating Digital Platforms, an annual production by Edison Research and Arbitron, confirmed that in terms of usage patterns, podcasting is holding its own but not signalling radical growth patterns – in part due to its moniker. The name, the mechanism behind its consumption, isn anything but easy on the mind for most yet the very nature of podcasting is becoming more appealing every month.
Podcasting 3.0 is audio marketing. It’s building on where we’ve come from, bringing greater opportunities for the content producers, harnessing the benefits of technology to create compelling shows with auditory and visual experiences.
Online customer interaction is founded on trust. People buy from people. Piles and piles more information are foisted on your client every day, making purchasing decisions very difficult indeed. So where do they turn for authority? The very personality of brand. And that personality isn’t in pixels – it’s in the voice of the business.
The only way to share your voice with the wider world is to either be there in person, or be there in personality. Since we haven’t yet figured a way to clone you, audio marketing is your best and most realistic opportunity to create trust-based, engaging relationships driving loyalty and word of mouth marketing.
Podcasting 2.0 delivered internet radio and ‘social’ podcasting, when listeners could interact in real time using chat rooms and social media, contributing to the real-time user experience.
Version 3 is today, an aggregation of time-shifted or real-time social podcasting and internet broadcasting for businesses, charities and community groups alike. Version 3 is audio marketing, and The Podcast Guy is ready to show you how to make it work to maximise your business profits by creating trust, engagement and loyalty in your customer communities.
I’m really interested to hear your views on this, so post a comment below and let me know what you think.
And don’t forget to sign up to The Podcast Guy newsletter over there, to the right, or drop me a line and let’s talk more about why audio marketing is the right way, today.
