All too often people make wrong assumptions. One of those wrong assumptions is that Podcasting is easy. All you have to do it hit play and start babbling (if only that were true).
Last week “I co-hosted Across The Sound”:http://www.acrossthesound.net/2006/05/ats_31_the_new_.html (the highly listened to Podcast from Life After The 30-Second Spot author, “Joseph Jaffe”:http://www.jaffejuice.com/) and man, it is a lot of work.
Mid-week Joseph sent me his show notes which included a list of discussions topics, our “winners” and “losers” of the week, and more. I spent the better part of my nights staying in the loop on all of the developments related to the topics, as well as looking out for new emerging events that might be more relevant by the time we would record.
The final product sounds smooth, but I know that Joseph puts a bunch of production time (aside from the usual glitches that arise when a new technology is in play) towards each episode. To be honest, I don’t know how he manages to Blog, Podcast, speak, travel and still do client work (there must be two of him).
Why is this important to marketers?
One Degree Posts
Growing up, neither “my brother”:http://www.onedegree.ca/category/karel-wegert nor I expected to work in interactive media. As a kid I abhorred technology, and my brother was far more interested in “NOFX”:http://www.nofxofficialwebsite.com/ than PPC. So it never ceases to amaze us – let alone our Mom – that we’re both now deeply entrenched in the interactive marketing industry.
Although she’s Internet-savvy in her own right (she emails, uses an instant messenger program, and is considering building a Web site to sell her decorative painting work online), our Mom still struggles a little to wrap her head around what it is that we do. Once, during a visit home, she happened to overhear my brother and I commiserating about a paid search campaign. “They might as well be speaking a different language!” she later told my father. But as she said it, there was a distinguishable note of pride in her voice.
I still remember the day I received one of the most astonishing email message ever.
What was so special about this message? It was from my mother. You see, until that moment, I never thought I’d live to see the day that my mother would send me an email message.
Now don’t get me wrong, my mother is one sharp lady; it’s just that she abhors computers and most of the trappings of the digital world. She even hates just looking at computer screens – “How can you stare at that THING without getting a headache?” – and she still does all her correspondence by writing longhand on engraved stationary.
But I also saw how frustrated my mother would get trying to stay in touch with my father when he traveled overseas on business, where phone and fax communication is spotty at best. She would literally spend hours trying to get through to my father’s hotel to send him a fax. Between the three of us, we did come up with a primitive workaround; if my father had access to email, he’d send messages for my mother to me via email, and I’d relay them to her via fax.
Convinced there had to be a better way, I began to investigate how I could allow my mother to send and receive email from my dad without having to use a computer. Using the Internet to do my research (of course), I uncovered a whole sub-strata of consumer products known as ’email appliances’ that are designed to bring the power and convenience of email to people (like my mother) who will never use, let alone own, a full-blown personal computer.