5 Things to Consider Before Podcasting As a Small Business

No doubt you like me, you are using your transit time, be it travelling or wait appointment and possibility even your insomnia to listen with your iPod to podcasts in your area of interest. I have a number of marketing favorites now including:

Ten Golden Rules

Ducttapemarketing

Six Degrees of Separation

Marketing Over Coffee

Marketing Geeks

These are all great and it begs the question should we all be doing podcasts for our businesses. Well, here are 5 things to consider before you take on this new social media. See if you can tick each area off.

Susan Bratton from Dishy Mix makes a good call when she explains whether you should go into podcasting. A veteran at podcasting, she explains that her preferred medium for communicating is to speak with people, even over blogging or twittering. Susan does have a great personality and she has honed her interviewing skills and so makes for an interesting host.

1. So deciding if this medium suits your style is number 1. If you feel you would rather blog, or remain in the background then this forum is not for you.

2. What do you want to achieve with the podcast? Is it another tool to connect with your customers? Is it serving a particular niche? To compliment yourself as an expert in a area is another valid reason. Maybe it is just to serve your ego, perhaps not the best reason but some people honestly want to share their burning passion. I think Jay uses this medium the best and that is to provide really great content in a different way. People are busy and to be able to download Jay and listen to him and is great expert guests and content is a must on my list. This also I am sure provides him with many speaking engagements as an expert.

3. You have to keep to a regular format which means setting the time aside to do the podcast every week, month or fortnight. Once you have the listeners you need to commit to the schedule. This is a hard one for some of us with limited resources but as Jay so cleverly does there are many ways to do a podcast. You can do it remotely from sites or take your ipod with a recording app and capture content at conferences, with clients and other guests. However, it is valid to remember that the editing of the podcast can take up to 3 times as long as the recording.

4. Technical skill – there are so many resources out there for podcasting that it is now easier than ever to do a podcast.

5. However to make it useful there are some categories that you need to look at. Using podcasting music from Podsafe network is really just the beginning.

Format and length
Content is king – is what you have to say worth listening
I think it is more entertaining to have a conversation so how do you create this, ie guests, call-ins
Editing – cover songs, sound quality and humour all add to the entertainment value
Publicise your pod – promote it and syndicate it via RRS
Monitize – sell archives of your show via membership or CD transcripts, make product recommendations (affilate and sponsorhip program, sell web banners for your podcast site.

Maybe like Moms Talk Biz – Kelly McCausey dicsusses in her podcast guide, we will all be podcasting sooner or later because our audience wants it, our competitors are doing it, and it is a very affordable communication tool. We already create websites, blogs, write articles and tweet so maybe podcasts/ be or audio or video like Andrew Lock is the next step?

Partnerships are a great way to start up a new small business. They are useful in that the workload and stress of the start up is divided. Also partners bring different and often complementary skills to the table that greatly enhances the scope and capabilities of the new business. Each partner also brings their own network of contacts of suppliers and customers.
 
Under ideal conditions and circumstances partnerships can work extremely well. There are times when partners do disagree. The key to having a good working relationship is in the partners that you choose.
 
Firstly and most importantly, everyone has to be able to get with one another. This may not be apparent from the very outset and often partnerships dissolve because after a while of working together, the participants discover that their personalities clash. In such cases splitting up is the least painful route to take, rather than go through a living hell on a day to day basis.
 
Partners need to be able to carry their weight. I have seen partnerships where one or more of the partners are workaholics and others are content to do the bare minimum. Naturally this is a recipe for disaster in the long term with resentment slowly building up over time and inevitably a blow out occurs.
 
A meeting of minds and personalities makes the best partnerships as well as a clear understanding of expectations of one another. A division of duties, roles and responsibilities is another essential element. These should be clearly itemized and divided in a manner that will suit all parties.
 
The division of duties may involve each partner taking on a different role in the business. For example one person takes on the financial and general administrative duties for the business, another takes on the production roles and responsibilities and yet another is responsible for sales and marketing. This type of functional division works very well in that no one can step on anyone else’s toes, because they all need one other to function as a whole.
 
In other partnerships where the partners are responsible for a different geographical area or perhaps responsible for a different client base or customer group, then a functional division is not the answer. In this case each partner will be responsible for all functional responsibilities but only for a particular geographical area or customer grouping.
 
At the end of the day, partnerships work very well when all participants believe that their efforts and contributions are being recognized and that all partners are respected and treated equally and fairly as they themselves would like to be treated. There must be an understanding between the partners that together the business is that much better off by every measurable means because of the partnership.
 
Each partner brings a level of collaborative synergy to the business. This is “the whole being greater than the sum of the individual parts” in action on a day to day basis. If these synergies cease, then the partnership is no longer an effective business model and an alternative model should be found.