Cameron Reilly, the founder of The Podcast Network, gave an online talk (using Centra) to ElNet members this afternoon.
The main points I recorded are:
- keep podcasts conversational (i.e. informal and non-scripted)
- people want to hear real people having real conversations
- avoid spin and corporate speak
- when implementing blogs in an organisation allow staff to express their opinions but include a caveat in the blogs to inform readers that the opinions are not necessarily those of the organisation. Also make the consequences of inappropriate entries clear to the authors.
- 94% of podcast downloads at The Podcast Network are archives. Thus, don’t take down old podcasts.
- The length of a podcast is limited only by bandwidth and practicalities. The listener controls the playback so they decide how long they want to listen for.
Other interesting notes:
- Google is the “storefront” of your business
- Bad publicity can have unexpected impacts online. The example given was of a company that decided to sue an online forum administrator for defamation because of messages posted my members of the forum. The news of this generated a lot of negative publicity, and importantly, lots of weblinks to this negative publicity. Since Google ranks pages based on links it meant that searches for this company displayed the websites highlighting the controversial decision. It’s akin to having a picket outside your front door. Not the sort of publicity you want and probably far worse than the original defamation would have been.
- Even Primary School Teachers need to develop good ICT skills, particularly when a 7 year old can own a laptop, learn programming and already touch-type at 50wpm.
Tags: ElNet, podcasting, the podcast network
