Marketing 2.0

Can Podcasting be Profitable?

Podcasting has generated a lot of buzz lately, especially since Apple integrated the technology in iTunes. You can now subscribe to any number of Podcasts and download them to your computer or your iPod.

The hype is revving up — this will replace traditional media, radio is dead, blah, blah, blah. Yes, it's a cool technology but can it generate revenue? Is it simply another means for individual expression (no doubt valuable), but ultimately another excuse to spend more unproductive hours in front of your computer?

I think that podcasting can be a valuable tool for corporate communications. Company updates, customer support, technical guides, training — these are all potential applications that come to mind.

Whether podcasts can be sold by subscription is another matter. I'll leave that to others to argue. The smart people over at Wharton are thinking about this phenomenon. Here's a link to a recent Wharton article that discusses the business potential for podcasting.

Link: Podcasting: Can This New Medium Make Money? - Knowledge@Wharton.

Corporate Policy on Blogging

Here is a good article from Dave Pollard suggesting policies for corporations to deal with employee blogging. There have been several high-profile incidents of employees being fired for blogging. While these people may or may not have violated corporate policies, their organizations have ended up with a lot of bad PR. In some cases, legal battles have ensued. Having a policy makes sense and Dave offers some good suggestions.

Link: How to Save the World.

Skype's Challenge

Strategy + Business recently published a good article on Skype, the peer-to-peer VOIP program that is making inroads in the corporate market. Skype has 35 million users signed up and is saving organizations and individuals a great deal on telephony costs. How much? Well, calls between Skype users are free. Free is pretty good. What's the catch? There are IT security concerns posed by all PTP programs as this article points out. Still, that hasn't prevented big companies like Accenture from using Skype. Give the article a read and consider whether Skype can be utilized in your organization.

Link: Skype%u2019s Challenge.